Rare Ould Times
by Atiaran
Summary: Celebrian returns to Middle-Earth--as a Seanchan der'morat'raken. LoTRWoT crossover. Completed. WARNING: Considerable liberties taken with both canons.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

I began work on this story one week after seeing "Fellowship of the Ring" in the theater for the first time, so I have been working on this story on and off for close to two years. I originally started it as a practice story—sort of a pre-rough draft—to explore some themes I'm working with in an original fiction, but it soon grew enough to become a story in its own right. I chose to use the Seanchan because they are depicted as very good at assimilating people, and also because I find them fascinating; I've read so many retreads of ancient Rome that Robert Jordan's choice to base his empire on Imperial China seemed downright refreshing in comparison. I'm still not completely satisfied with the story, but I've reached the point where I'm sick of working on it, so I decided to post it and get it out of the way.

WARNING: CONSIDERABLE LIBERTIES ARE TAKEN WITH BOTH LOTR AND WOT CANON IN THIS STORY. If you are a devoted Tolkien fan—or a devoted Wheel of Time fan, but in my experience Tolkien fans tend to be more passionate than WoT fans, so this warning is aimed mostly at them—then this is probably not the story for you. Don't say I didn't warn you. Those of you who are not canon hounds and are capable of taking your fandoms with a grain of salt, come on in.

**Standard Disclaimer:**

Most of the characters, locations, etc. contained within are not mine but are the property of their respective authors, J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert Jordan. No copyright infringement is intended or implied by their use here. Keille Sar, Maekel Etari, Eilei Katrell, Ajan Idwalle, Yisuen, Riete, Sumi Bitrou, Sheilene, Lana and Ciriel belong to this author. 

The songs and poetry are also the property of their respective authors, J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert Jordan, except for material from "The Ol' Beggar's Bush" and "Rare Ould Times," which are from Flogging Molly's _Swagger_ and _Drunken Lullabies_ albums respectively. "Lady of Shadows" is adapted by the author from "Jak o' The Shadows" by Robert Jordan, to fit in a Seanchan context. Again, no copyright infringement is intended or implied by their use here. 

_"…As the gray unyielding concrete_

_Makes a city of my town."_

—"Rare Ould Times," from Flogging Molly's _Drunken Lullabies._

            The First Expeditionary Force of the Ever Victorious Army was slogging.  They had made landfall two weeks before and had proceeded up the branch of a nameless river, which the Others among them—there were a few, although not many, even in an army seventy thousand strong, as this was—said was called the Gwathlo.  That had given way to another, called the Mitheithel, which had given way to yet a third, called the Bruinen.  It was along the Bruinen that their primary destination lay, at least according to the word from High Lady Suroth, she who led the Ever Victorious Army.

            "It all looks like the same bloody river to me," groused Keille, looking down from her perch on _raken_-back.

            Below her, the Ever Victorious Army spread out in all its size along the banks of the river.  It looked like a river itself in moving dull metal and bronze colors, brightened here and there by the banners and standards of those of the Blood who moved among them, flowing endlessly among the green grass and trees and foliage of these lands.  Long columns of pikemen, swordmen, archers, and cavalry were flanked by _grolm_ and _lopar_, hopping _corlm_, and riders on _torm_-back.  Huge, bulking supply wagons brought up the rear, along with cage after cage of _damane,_ protectively surrounded by _sul'dam_ on horseback.  Keille was glad to see them; _damane _caused her unease, even though she knew the _a'dam_ made them safe, and it was a comfort to know the _sul'dam_ were so close by.  Flights of _to'raken_, laden either with cargo or with the female Fists of Heaven, flew with long, powerful strokes above them.   Keille, as a _raken_-rider, flew even above the _to'raken_, high above the army, seated behind her _der'morat'raken_ Briande, who controlled the beast.  She stretched in her saddle, kicking her feet out, hot in her leather armor; her insectile helmet hung slung by a strap around her neck, freeing her short brown hair to glisten in the sunlight.

            In front of her, Briande twisted in the saddle to look down at Keille.  She was tall for a _raken_-rider, where weight conservation was at a premium, yet unusually slender and gracile—a fortunate thing, and even so, when physicals came around she had to starve herself for days on end to squeak in under the weight requirements.  As she always told Keille, she would be very _sei'mosiev_ to be thrown off the _rakens_ after all these years due to failing her physicals.  Now she raised one pale brow, barely visible in the shadow of her helmet.  "What did you say?"

            "I said it all looks like the same bloody river to me," Keille spoke louder, stretching again and shaking her head.  "I'm tired of following this river.  I want to see some action."

            Briande shrugged. "I'm sure we'll see some soon enough," she said only, and then leaned out in the saddle to check the set of the wing of _rakens_ and their riders gliding in formation behind them.  The _rakens_ behind them were spread out in perfect double-chevron formation, just as they should be, their riders alert and aware, watching all around, above and below; still, Briande checked them anyway, and sat back in her saddle with a small, satisfied nod.  Briande was one of the best _der'morat'rakens_ in the whole of the Ever Victorious Army, and had become so due to meticulous attention to detail, thus meriting her position as Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ to this force.  It was a position, she had told her back-rider privately over many glasses of kaf, that both excited her and frightened her, because if she did well enough here, on this expedition—triggered by the Foretelling of the Empress of the Nine Moons' truth-speakers—she might be tapped to head up the entire raken forces for the Return, across the Aryth Ocean.

            And Keille, of course, as her faithful backrider, second-in-command, and aide, would go with her.  Keille did not care much for the prospect of power—neither, she thought to herself, did Briande, actually; Keille was of the opinion that Briande just wanted to test herself—but the prospect of the loot, adventure, and the Empress's favor was enough to make her mouth water.

            The land flashed past under the wings of Iraumu, green and glistening and somehow too quiet; Keille shook her head.  Now she spoke again.  "No, I can't wait to finish up here and go back to Seanchan.  This land is too strange for me; something's wrong here. It's too quiet, the—the noises are different somehow, and the light—and all these Others!  _Brr_…"  She shivered ostentatiously.  Briande looked back at her again, frowning slightly, and Keille felt guilt needle her.

            "Sorry, Briande.  It's just—being surrounded by them, somehow gives me the creeps."  

            "It's all right, Keille," Briande said graciously.  She unslung her water bottle from her shoulder and offered it to Keille; Keille took a swig from it gratefully and handed it back.  Briande always put lemon and sugar in her water whenever she could get them, or occasionally mint, something that Keille kept meaning to do but somehow usually forgot.  "I know you didn't mean to offend me."

            For a moment they flew on in silence, hovering above the rest of the army; they dropped briefly, then rose as Iraumu lost, then found another current of air.  The marching songs of the Ever Victorious Army drifted up to them where they hovered in the humid air.  That was another thing Keille didn't like about this area; the climate.  Presently she leaned forward in the saddle again, peering past Briande's shoulder.  "Do they know?"

            "Does who know what?" Briande asked absently, tightening the reins slightly as Iraumu sideslipped.

            "Do they know that we're coming?  I mean, just randomly showing up with an army on the doorstep is the fastest way I can think of to get someone suddenly dead….."

            Briande shrugged.  "They should.  High Lady Suroth dispatched Third Flight Fifth Talon the moment we made landfall, and she's been in correspondence by _raken_ ever since, so if they don't know if we're coming by now…."

            Keille shivered.  "Frankly, I don't—"  She cut herself off shortly; it was wrong to speak ill of one of the Blood, no matter how one felt about them.  After a moment, she modified what she had been going to say.  "Yes, I'm sure she did.  High Lady Suroth is extremely methodical."  She knew that Briande knew her well enough by now to know what she meant by that.

            "She is," Briande spoke with a complete lack of emotion that informed Keille that the _der'morat'raken_ agreed.

            "I wonder how much longer."

            "Shouldn't be too long," Briande said levelly; only Keille knew _her_ well enough to catch the slight hint of strain in her voice.

            "Briande, are you all right?" she asked now, wishing that they were facing each other so she could read her friend's expression.  "You've been acting strange and subdued ever since landfall.  I know being here probably feels strange to you—"

            "I'm all right, just feeling the strain a little," Briande said lightly, and Keille saw her slender shoulders twitch under her leather armor as she shrugged.  "You know this is the practice for the real thing, and if something goes wrong here…."

            _The Return._  Briande didn't need to specify any more; Keille knew she worried about that almost nightly.  She slapped her friend on the shoulders.

            "You should be like me, Briande!  Go out and roister every now and then.  Sure you dice occasionally, but what you really need to do is go out, get roaring drunk, suck up a gallon or two of dreamsmoke, go back to your tent with a tall, strong man, and wake up the next morning puking into the chamber pot and regretting the whole thing.  You'll feel all kinds of better afterwards, I promise."

            Briande shook her head with a small smile.  "No, that's not for me, Keille.  It's just not my way." 

            Keille shrugged.  "Suit yourself.  What is the name of this place we're headed to, anyway?" she asked, straining to look past Briande again.

            Briande was silent for a moment, until Keille looked quizzically at her friend; when the Other answered it was with her head turned away and her eyes down.  "Rivendell."


	2. First Meetings

Elrond Half-Elven watched from the shelter of his front hall, standing with arms folded as the Ever Victorious Army passed beneath his view.

            It had come, the darkness he had feared for and watched for ever since the days of the Last Alliance; Mordor was again grown strong and Sauron the Enemy stretching forth his hand upon the world.  The courage of Gil-galad, and Elendil, and the tragic Isildur—for tragedy it was; he had been so strong in his weakness or perhaps weak in his strength; even after all these years, Elrond was unsure—together had barely been enough last time to drive back the dark, and this time, they had no such heroes.  There would never again be an alliance of Men and Elves like that last one.  His people's time in Middle-Earth was drawing to a close.  All they had now, in place of the heroes of the Second Age, were Aragorn—his brows contracted slightly at the thought—the broken shards of Narsil, a hobbit, a handful of dwarves….and, now, these Seanchan.

            He did not know if it would be enough. 

            He did not quite know what to make of these Seanchan; he had never seen anything like them before in all the days of his long life.  They were settling into position at the entrance to Rivendell as he watched, the home that he had spent his life building; the fields were dark with the lacquered and painted armor of the soldiers and officers, the air ringing with the shouts and calls of these mortals to each other.  Strange creatures the likes of which he had never seen before flew and hopped among them, and stranger still, women in cages, wearing silver collars around their necks, guarded by other women wearing dresses with inset panels of red and forked lightning.  He disliked those women on sight; something about them disturbed him, though he could not say what it was.

            He turned now to Mithrandir, standing beside him and watching silently as well.  "What are you thinking, old friend?" he asked quietly.

            Gandalf said nothing for a time, standing and watching the wave after wave of humanity flow past and eddy around the small hill occupied by the house.  Already the Seanchan had begun digging in, fortifying their positions, going to work with shovels and spades to create a ditch around their campsite, erecting tents in neat square blocks…it was unsettling to see the swiftly efficient way they went to work, almost as if some greater intelligence were directing them, the various parts working together in perfect coordination….as if the whole army beneath them were one great beast, perhaps, directed by a single mind.  Elrond found that he did not much care for the cavalier way they treated the land and earth which he had spent so much of his life protecting and defending; indeed, it was almost painful to watch the methodical, ruthless way in which they were altering it.  He experienced a brief moment of gladness, tempered with the pain that the thought of his wife always brought, that Celebrian was not here to behold this; she would have wept, he knew, to see it.   Who were these Seanchan to come and trench and heap the earth like this, molding it and shaping it to their will, surrounding his house like a forest, more and more of them with each successive day?  Of course, he reflected, he had nobody but himself to blame; he had accepted the help of this High Lady Suroth and had agreed to allow them to establish a—a—"staging area," she had called it, here.

He simply had not, he thought, fully understood the magnitude of _what_ he was agreeing _to._

With a sigh, Elrond turned his attention back to his companion.

            At length, Mithrandir spoke, resting his eyes on the cages of women being unloaded.  His first words echoed what Elrond had been thinking to himself.  "These Seanchan….I find them unsettling, old friend," he admitted slowly.  "They—they seem unlike any sort of people I have encountered in my time on this earth, and I do not know exactly how to take them."  It was very rare indeed that Mithrandir admitted to any sort of uncertainty, and Elrond could hear the undercurrents of frustration in his tone.

            "Do you sense the Shadow in them?" he asked quietly, moving closer to the wizard to ensure that their words would be heard by none but each other—although there was little risk of them carrying; even within the hall, the noise of the Seanchan as they set up their camp was such that they would probably not be heard even if they shouted.

            "No….no," Mithrandir said slowly, shaking his head.  "Not the Shadow, not as such….although there is something about their leader, the High Lady Suroth—"  He fell silent again.  "But whatever darkness she carries within her, if darkness it be, it is not like the Shadow we know of.  I detect no touch of Sauron on them.  All the same, I would advise caution, my friend," he said, shaking his head.  "They are unlike to us in the strongest sense of the word, and though they may not mean to play us false…."

            "Is it safe to accept their help, do you think?"

            Mithrandir gave a grim laugh.  "We have little choice.  Mordor is strong and we are weak; we can ill afford to turn down any aid which might present itself.  And I will say this:  I feel that they will not betray us to the Enemy."

            Elrond nodded; he had felt the same, that they must take their aid wherever it was offered.  Moreover, he trusted the Istari's perceptions implicitly.  If Mithrandir said that these strange ones would not betray them, then it was almost certainly the case.  "All the same, I find them….unsettling."

            "As do I.  As do I."

            For a moment, the two friends were silent, watching the activity around and in front of them; teams of Seanchan were working almost directly under their eyes, laying a sturdy-looking broad plank bridge with economical speed across a branch of the South Fork of the Bruinen river.  The determined, efficient way in which this task was being accomplished brushed Elrond's heart with a chill, though he did not reveal it. At length, Elrond said to Mithrandir, "Do you think it was wise to tell High Lady Suroth about….Isildur's Bane?"

            Mithrandir sighed now, lowering his head.  "I could see no way to keep it from her.  And besides, if these Seanchan are to be our allies, then they must know all that we know.  But did you see her reaction when I spoke to her of it?" he asked now, turning and looking at Elrond.  The other shook his head.

            Mithrandir shrugged.  "It was as if she had never heard of it, had never heard of the last War of the Ring; as if she had heard not of Sauron or Morgoth, or the forging of the Rings of Power, of Isildur….As a daughter of Men, of course, she could not have been alive during those events, yet still I had thought the tales of that time had spread through all the races of Men….

Elrond frowned slightly, unaware of it.  "Strange."

"Indeed.  And furthermore she seemed not at all afraid or worried, either of the Ring or of Sauron; she simply began asking me coolly for information, as if—almost as if diagnosing a—a mistake of some kind that she would correct by-and-by.  I don't—"

            "There you are."

            Mithrandir broke off as the characteristic strangely-slurred speech of the Seanchan fell in their ears; they both turned to see the approach of the High Lady Suroth, surrounded by members of her retinue, her bootheels ringing on the stone floor.  When Elrond had first seen her, he had instantly considered her to be one of the strangest-looking humans he had ever seen in his long life, and now saw no reason to change that opinion.  She was dressed in armor of overlapping plates, painted black and outlined in gold, her insectile helmet under one arm; at her back were two long blades, the hilts protruding up past her shoulders.  Her dark hair was shaved on either side of her head, leaving only a stripe down the middle, and the nails on the first two fingers of her hands were an inch long, and lacquered in blue.  She moved with an incredibly calm, incredibly self-possessed air the likes of which he had never beheld in any human, and looked on all she surveyed from behind half-lowered lids, as if there were nothing in the world that could dismay her or disturb that cool detachment.  She turned that cool look upon him now, watching him watch her approach and her army.  "Behold," she said calmly, gesturing toward the window.  "The Ever Victorious Army, at the bidding of the Crystal Throne of Seanchan, has come to your aid, Elrond of the Others.  Seventy thousand swords, with six hundred _damane_ and five full flights of _raken_ and _to'raken_, along with companies of _grolm_, _torm_, _corlm_ and _lopar_. Of course," she added with a smile, "the six hundred _damane_ count at least as another ten thousand soldiers.  At least. And more to come, should it be required, should the message be sent to the Empress of Seanchan, may the Light shine upon  her and may she live forever.  Will it be enough, do you think?"

            She said the last with a sort of calm smile, as if she had no doubts that it would be enough—indeed, as if nobody _could_ have any doubts, upon viewing her army.  And though this Ever Victorious Army was large indeed, and impressive, and moved with—a _coordination,_ his mind put it—that he had not seen before, Elrond had beheld the last War of the Ring.  He said only, "We will see." 

            High Lady Suroth arched one dark brow at him, as if to say that even to doubt their army was cause enough to question the sanity of the speaker.  After a moment, she said, "When will this council meeting be held, about this ring of yours?"

            _This ring of yours…_  Carefully keeping his tone level, he replied, "This afternoon."

            "I will be there."  Without so much as another word, High Lady Suroth turned and walked off, her retinue following behind her. 

            The sounds of their army drifted in through the windows open to catch the summer breeze, following Elrond as he paced down the hall, then turned to step through an archway into a small interior courtyard.  Within the walls of the interior courtyard, they were not absent, but muted to a point where they could be ignored; Elrond spared a moment to enjoy the relief.

            Arwen his daughter was seated there on a low stone bench by the fountain, deep in conversation with Aragorn, her betrothed.  For a moment Elrond said nothing, remaining silently in the archway and simply watching the two of them.  _Arwen, Arwen,_ he thought to himself, _you do not know how beautiful you are, how much you mean to me….how will I live when you are gone?_  And then, underneath that thought, _Was it my blood that doomed you to this?_  

She looked so like her mother, he mused to himself as he watched her, sitting there on the stone, as fair as her mother had been in the days so long ago when he had first taken her to wife.  The love of his daughter, the knowledge that she was depending on him and required his protection, had been one of the few things that had enabled him to endure once Celebrian had departed the shores of Middle-Earth to cross the sea five hundred years ago; of course, he knew that one day he would clasp his wife in his arms again, but that was cold comfort on the days when the pain of her absence ached like an amputation.  As the time remaining to him in Middle-Earth drew to a close—as the time of his departure drew increasingly imminent—he had anticipated the reunion more and more greatly; the land of Middle-Earth seemed a torment to him and he was impatient to be gone.  Then had come this.  Was he to gain his wife again after a temporary absence, only to lose his daughter forever?  And for what part of this could he be fairly blamed?  He gave a small sigh, unheard by the two lovers sitting together.

            At least, he mused to himself dimly, if he was to lose his daughter forever, it would be to the king of both Gondor and Arnor.  He could do that much for his daughter, though he could do nothing else for her.

            Arwen looked up from her speech and rose, going to embrace him.  "Father," she said warmly as she put her arms around him.  Elrond held her for a moment, wishing vaguely that he could hold her so forever; of course that was impossible.  He summoned up a smile for her; one that fell as Aragorn rose too behind her.  He had come to terms with his daughter's choice, really he had, or at least so he kept telling himself; however, that did not mean he had to like it.  Arwen noticed his suddenly changed expression.

            "Are you well, Father?" she inquired earnestly.  "I know that you have been dealing with the Seanchan—Elladan and Elrohir have told me how strange these Seanchan are—is there anything I can do to aid you?"

            He shook his head, smiling slightly again for her.  "No, I assure you that you need not be concerned for me, daughter.  The situation is well in hand.  I need to speak with your betrothed at this time—" he managed to say that easily enough "—regarding the council later today.  If I might impose upon you for a moment of his time…."

            "Of course," she said, smiling back at him.  With a slight bow to her father and her betrothed, Arwen turned and left the two of them together.  The males watched her go.

            "I worry about her," Aragorn murmured as if to himself.  Elrond turned and looked at him in surprise.

            "You do?"

            Aragorn glanced at him.  "Among these Seanchan?  Of course.  I have spoken to Arwen and told her that I feel it would be for the best if she would avoid them; I do not know these people and I would not have her be hurt by them if I could avoid it.  She promised me she would do so."

            "I spoke to her of the same thing," Elrond murmured, looking at the human with a new regard.  "I told her to stay away from them as well, and she agreed."  Somehow it made him feel better to know that Aragorn had taken thought for his daughter's safety. 

            "What did you wish to speak to me of?" Aragorn asked now, turning toward him seriously.

            "This council, with High Lady Suroth; it is to be this afternoon.  It is here that we are to decide what must be done with the ring."

            Aragorn nodded seriously, looking back at the tall Elf.  "I am, to be honest, of the opinion that it must be destroyed.  It is simply too dangerous otherwise."

            Elrond nodded; Aragorn saw that the other's pale gaze had turned inward, remembering, perhaps, the far-off days when the ring had first been cut from the hand of the enemy, when Isildur had proven weak.  Aragorn sighed to himself.  As much as he had hoped otherwise, a strain had come into their relationship, since the day Aragorn had asked for the hand of Arwen; a strain that Aragorn would have done much to alleviate.  He knew that whenever the tall Elf looked at him now, he saw among other things, the path leading his daughter away from his care and toward the Doom of Men, and as a result the one who had raised him from childhood, the one whom Aragorn considered almost as a father, had drawn away from him a little.  Aragorn guessed that in his heart, Elrond blamed not just Aragorn, but himself as well; not for nothing was he called Half-Elven, and both this love of humans and the choice before Arwen came from his blood.

            _If only it could be otherwise,_ he thought to himself, and sighed again; the way of the world was hard, sometimes.

            At last, Elrond spoke again, looking back at the Man before him.  "That is the opinion of myself and Mithrandir as well.  The Ring must not be allowed to survive for the Enemy to lay his hands upon."

            "Do you think there will be trouble from the other races?" Aragorn asked him now, in a low voice.

            Elrond sighed.  "I do not know.  Not Mirkwood," he added then.  "They are Elves in Mirkwood, and know the peril, for all that they are not equal in power to those of Lothlorien.  And the one who leads them—Legolas—is wise though young for one of our kind.  Mirkwood should offer no trouble," he finished then, quietly.

            Aragorn nodded.  "I fear the Dwarves a little," he said next.  "The Dwarves can be greedy of wealth and gold, and though they were not brought under the Shadow by the Seven, they were affected by it nonetheless.  They might find it difficult to destroy such a treasure."

            "That may be, but the Dwarves are also nothing if not reasonable.  I do not think it will be difficult to show them the truth."

            "In that you are correct," Aragorn conceded.  "And their leader Gimli, again, seems intelligent enough to be able to discern the correct path."

            "It is the Men of Gondor that I fear most," Elrond said now, his gaze again turning inward.  "The Men of Gondor have struggled against the Shadow for many long years; it is in my heart that they have grown desperate with their long trials.  In addition," he added with a trace of bitterness so faint that Aragorn was not even sure the Elf was aware of it, "they have the lust for power that is common to all Men, and I fear that their long trial has enhanced this…changed it, perhaps; made it more difficult for them to recognize this for what it is, to separate it from their desire to see victory over the Shadow.  And their leader, Boromir…."  He did not continue.

            "Boromir's heart is conflicted," Aragorn said now quietly.  "He struggles with himself and the darkness within.  But there is good in him," the human continued strongly.  "There is good in him, of this I am sure; and it is my feeling that at the last, that good will triumph."

            Elrond lifted his eyes to look at Aragorn now.  "I hope that you are right," he said.  "For all our sakes, I hope that you are right."

            Silence fell between them for a while, each reflecting on his own thoughts;  at last Aragorn looked back at Elrond.  "What about these Seanchan?" he asked now.

            Elrond paused, thinking, then said, "Mithrandir says that they can be trusted."

            "And you?"

            Now the Elf smiled slightly, grimly.  "I am not so sure.  They are strong, yes, but their strength is coupled with an arrogance the likes of which I have not seen before…even among Men.  They talk so blithely of defeating the Shadow, when they have not beheld any of its works.  And they—"  He paused again, as if trying to find words to express his thoughts.  "They are different," he said at last.  "They are very unlike to us—Mithrandir says they are unlike to those of Middle-Earth in the strongest sense of the word.  This difference is troubling to me, more so since it seems as if they bring their difference with them, and that it spreads to everything they touch.  Yet Mithrandir says that they will not betray us, and if he says such a thing, then it is as good as true."

            Aragorn nodded, dropping his eyes for a moment.  "They seem to think that to defeat Sauron will be no difficult task for their army."

            "Their army is indeed strong," Elrond repeated only.

            "Do you think they can do this?"

            The Elf lowered his eyes to the floor as he pondered.  "It is in my heart that numbers alone will not suffice.  Not for this task," he said at last.  "There is only one hope to us."  And he sighed bitterly.

            "And that is?" Aragorn asked, though he knew the answer; knew, and indeed, it filled him with a great fatigue.

            Elrond lifted his eyes now and seemed tall and imposing as he looked upon the Man, holding him with his pale gaze.  "You are that hope, Estel," he said quietly.  Then, leaving that statement hanging in the air, he turned and left, moving noiselessly over the stone floor.

            Aragorn remained in that courtyard for a long time, staring at the walls without seeing them, at the delicate flowers and the stone fountain.  _You are that hope, Estel._  He had known it, of course; he had known that the weight of Middle-Earth hung upon his shoulders.  Hearing it from Elrond, however, somehow made the burden seem twice as heavy.  

            He was still staring at the walls when he heard footsteps approach.  "Boromir," he said without turning, recognizing the sound of the tread.

            "It is I."  Boromir came through the archway to stand beside him.

            "How long have you been listening?"

            "Long enough to hear about the Seanchan," Boromir responded easily enough.  Aragorn was slightly relieved that he had not heard Elrond's doubts about him.

            "What do you think of them?" Aragorn asked now, looking at him sidelong.

            "I think _Peredhil_ is right," Boromir said darkly.  "I think that numbers alone will not suffice for this task.  I have spent my life fighting the Shadow and I know."

            Aragorn only nodded and bowed his head.

            "No," Boromir continued bitterly, "the power of the Shadow is too great.  These Seanchan—yes, their army is larger than any I have seen in my lifetime, but numbers are not enough.  How often have I seen the Men of Gondor hurl vast hosts against the foe, only to have them cut down like wheat before the scythe?  I think there is only one way that the Shadow might be defeated."  And here he stopped and looked at Aragorn intently.

            Aragorn winced under that regard.  "And what way might that be?" he asked warily, though he knew what Boromir would say; Boromir had dropped hints of this many times before.  He did not want to hear it, yet perhaps it was good that he did so.

            Boromir did not answer right away.  He went on looking at Aragorn intently, then said, slowly, cautiously, "Why do you not take up the Ring, Heir of Isildur?  Take the Ring and use it against the Shadow?"

            "Boromir," Aragorn  said sternly.

            "I speak in truth," Boromir went on intently, his gaze sharpening with the passion of his conviction.  "Take up the Ring!  Use it as a weapon against Mordor.  For _all_ our sakes.  I think—I _know_—that this is the _only_ way that Mordor can be defeated.  You _must—_"

            "_Boromir!_" Aragorn interrupted him sharply.  Then he continued, looking down, "I _dare_ not.  It is not fitting for me—"

            "Who if not you?" the other man demanded sternly.  Seeing Aragorn falter, he continued.  "Who if not you?  You are Isildur's Heir, Aragorn," he said, holding him with his eyes.  "If the Ring is _anyone's_ by right then it is yours.  You need not be corrupted by it—you need not hold it long enough!  Destroy the Enemy, _then _destroy the Ring.  You must do it.  For all our sakes, you must.  You _must—"_

            "_Stop!_" Aragorn insisted desperately, raising his hands to his ears.  Boromir broke off, staring at him, brows drawn together, but Aragorn hardly saw.  What Boromir was saying sounded so sensible to him—it sounded so rational, so right, so logical—that he did not dare listen to the other man's words a moment longer.  After a long struggle to master himself, he spoke again, looking at Boromir with troubled eyes, "Don't you see, Boromir?  It is just because I have the right that I dare not do so."  Boromir started to speak again but Aragorn overrode him.  "Everything you say to me," he continued urgently, "do you think I have not already said it to myself in the recesses of my mind?  Yes, I have the right, I am Isildur's Heir, this is the only power strong enough to stand against the Enemy, I could save all of Middle-Earth from the Shadow—but do you not see, how can I tell this voice from the voice of the Ring itself, calling out to me?  And the fact that I cannot tell," he continued, "is enough to tell me by itself that such talk is dangerous."

            Boromir sighed sharply and stalked away from him a few paces, glaring unseeing at the wall in frustration.  After a moment he said, looking back over his shoulder, "I heard what Elrond said to you."

            "And that was?" Aragorn asked, keeping his face expressionless.

            "About how you are the only hope."  He snorted in disgust, his shoulders tight with some unnamed emotion.   Aragorn remained silent, watching the other man carefully.

            Presently, Boromir spoke again, his voice bitter and self-mocking at once.  "It is hard, Dunedain," he said.  "I have spent my life fighting the Shadow.  All I desire is to defeat it.  I would give _anything_ to be the one to pull Mordor down, for what it has done to my lands if nothing else.  I have fought, and yet as I have, I have been weakened by the knowledge that I _do not suffice_, I—I am not enough for this task.  This knowledge has been bitter indeed.  And now I hear Elrond saying that all my struggle and work is for naught, that it signifies less than nothing—"

            "That is not precisely what he said," Aragorn murmured softly, struck by the other man's pain.

            Boromir dismissed this attempt at comfort with a rough shrug.  "It comes to the same.  He says that you are our only hope, and I—"

            Aragorn remained silent.

            "So it is hard," he resumed sharply, looking back at Aragorn almost with anger.  "_You_ are Isildur's Heir.  _You_ have a right to the Ring, though you will not use it.  _You_ are the hope of the Dunedain.  _You_ are the one who will destroy the Shadow.  _You_ have won the heart of Arwen Undomiel, the Evenstar who rivals Luthien Tinuviel; it is for _you_ that she will sacrifice her immortality.   No, no—" he continued, as Aragorn would have spoken.  "Do not misunderstand me; I bear you no ill will, indeed, I wish the both of you nothing but happiness together," he said, looking at Aragorn levelly so that the other man could see he spoke the truth.  "But still—It is hard, Dunedain," he repeated mirthlessly, and turned away again.

            Aragorn sighed, watching the man of Minas Tirith.  After a moment, he said quietly, "Do not envy me, Boromir.  The weight of Middle-Earth does not rest easily on my shoulders.  So far it has brought, will bring me, precious little but suffering and grief.  Even my love for Lady Arwen is tinged with sorrow, for it costs her that which is rightfully hers, her immortality, and beyond that it has estranged me from my foster-father Lord Elrond.  There is no life that is free of grief, Boromir," he said now, looking at the other man.   "Mine may be different from yours, but it is still grief nonetheless."

            Boromir said nothing, but looked on him darkly, then turned and left the courtyard.  Aragorn watched him go, troubled in his heart.

            Arwen turned down the passageway from the courtyard, heading toward another interior garden in which she sometimes liked to spend her idle moments.  She was troubled in her heart.  She knew that both her father and her beloved were troubled by these strange Seanchan people, and wished that there was something she could do to help, but she did not know how to aid them.  

            She looked up to see her brother Elladan step through an arch ahead of her, then stop and lean against the wall behind him, closing his eyes briefly; the fatigue and strain she saw in his face twisted her heart.  Quickly she stepped closer to him, and spoke to him gently.  "Are you well, my brother?"

            Elladan opened his eyes and looked down at her, a smile touching his face as he saw her.  "Yes, I am well, sister," he told her warmly.

            "You looked fatigued…."

            He shrugged slightly.  "I have been dealing with these Seanchan all morning.  Father instructed Elrohir and me to help them settle in and become organized, and I have been directing them all day.  There are so _many_ of them," he sighed and rubbed at his temples briefly.  "And they all have so many _strange_ requests and demands…"  He straightened and looked at her.  "Are _you_ well?" he inquired.  "These Seanchan have not given you any trouble, have they?"

            Arwen bit her lip and looked down.  "No," she admitted honestly, "but they—they frighten me a little," she added reluctantly.  "I have never seen anything like these people before and I scarcely know how to take them."

            Elladan sighed now, looking strained again.  After a moment he put a hand on her shoulder.  "I am sorry they frighten you," he told her quietly. "I want you to stay away from them, sister," he said seriously.  "I don't think they would try to harm you, but….Will you do that for me?"

            Arwen lowered her eyes.  "I will," she promised softly.  "Aragorn and Father have already asked that of me, and I have agreed."  Not for all the world would she have admitted to the strange feelings in her heart when she saw the Seanchan—they frightened her, yes, for she had never seen anything like them before, but at the same time she—

            They were so _different,_ she thought to herself, so _strange_….She had never seen so many women among an army before, either human or elven.  Some of them were the strange and disturbing women chained by the necks—those women troubled her a great deal—but others wore light armor, and carried weaponry, and walked among the soldiers laughing and talking freely…. 

            Elladan embraced her briefly.  "Good.  It will be one less thing for me to worry about if I know that you are safe."  Just then a loud crash and raised alarmed Seanchan voices were heard shouting from outside.  Elladan winced and released her, stepping back.  

            "I must go," he told her as he turned back toward the door.  "I cannot leave Elrohir to deal with these Seanchan all by himself.  Go to your garden," he told her over his shoulder.  "The Seanchan should not disturb you there."

            Elladan stepped through the door and outside, leaving Arwen alone within the confines of the hall.  She peered briefly through the door, catching a glimpse of people, carts, and a strange, frog-like creature as large as a bear—with _three_ eyes—before it swung shut.  That recalled her to herself; Elladan had suggested that she retire to her garden, and of course she did not want to run afoul of the Seanchan….

            Quickly she turned and continued down the hall. 

            High Lady Suroth had retired to her pavilion, reclining on luxurious silk cushions and warming her hands around a cup of kaf, served by one of the _da'covale_ who knelt in sheer white silks against the far wall of her tent, when her Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ came to her.

            Suroth watched her as she brushed aside the silken hangings, then dropped gracefully into a bow—not as deep as it might have been; this _der'morat'raken_ had been raised to the Blood quite some time ago, and was entitled to shave her head and lacquer her nails.  She did not do so; she was Other, and Others and Ogier would sometimes bend rules that men and women did not.  The _der'morat _remained, kneeling, her eyes on the floor, until Suroth said calmly, "Rise and be _sei'taer_ in my sight, Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ Briande."

            Briande did so, removing her insectile helmet and tucking it under her arm.  "You requested my presence, High Lady Suroth?" she asked respectfully, her eyes raised, but not so far that Suroth might take it as insolence.

            Suroth studied Briande for a moment.  With her helmet removed, her Otherness became more apparent; her features had the characteristic look of sharp balance that Suroth knew was common among the Others; her hair, though cut short to allow it to be more easily tucked under the helmet, was golden blonde, her eyes a pale blue, and her ears came to delicate points on either side of her face.  She waited patiently; _of course,_ Suroth thought to herself, knowing how old the Others were reputed to be; a wait of a moment or two would mean nothing to her.

            "I did," Suroth said at last.  "Sit, Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken,_ and be at ease."  She gestured to the low table that occupied the middle of the outer room of the pavilion.  

            Moving with the delicate grace characteristic of the Others, Briande moved to kneel at the table.  Suroth raised an eyebrow.  "Kaf?" she asked.

            "Yes, please," Briande indicated.  Suroth gestured to the _da'covale_ against the walls.  One of them, a man, rose to his feet and, moving with the silent precision of long practice, came to the table.  He took the pot and poured without spilling a drop into a _cuendillar_ cup—High Lady Suroth actually had a set of _cuendillar_ cups, culled carefully from far-flung lands of Seanchan—then retreated.  Briande took the cup in her hands carefully and sipped, the steam from the black liquid wreathing her sharp, pointed features.

            "I have asked you here," Suroth said now, watching her calmly, "to inquire of you about this strange land.   You are originally from this…Middle-Earth, are you not?"

            "Yes, High Lady," the _der'morat'raken_ acknowledged.  "Many, many years ago."

            Suroth raised one brow, looking at her calmly.  "Of which land are you now, my Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken?_"

            "High Lady?"

            "Of which land are you now?"  Suroth repeated.  "Seanchan or this Middle-Earth?  This is your homeland, is it not?  I know that the pull of one's homeland can be strong, at least, for us humans; perhaps more so for one of you Others.  Whom do you serve?  This land, or the land of the Empress of the Nine Moons, She who sits on the Crystal Throne?"  Seeing Briande's frozen expression, Suroth modified her tone a trace. "You know what is to come after we have finished here, Briande," she said, almost gently.  "On to the Westlands, the lands of Artur Hawkwing Paendrag, from whence his son Luthair came over a thousand years ago to conquer the Armies of the Night and found the Empire.  The _Corenne._  If all goes well…."  She did not need to say what came next.  There was not a person in the Ever Victorious Army that did not know it.

One thousand years ago Luthair Paendrag had taken ship from the storied Westlands with an army numbering in the tens of thousands, charged by his father the great Artur Hawking Paendrag with a mission—to find if there were any lands that lay across the Aryth Ocean, and if so, to bring them under the sway of Hawkwing's throne.  In the years that followed their first landfall on the shores of Seanchan—at the docks of Shon Kifar itself, so the histories had it--Paendrag's army had lost contact with the Westlands, but had remained true to their charge.  For the last thousand years, those armies, their descendants, and their descendants' descendants had been fighting, struggling, to subdue and tame the entire continent of Seanchan and to bring it to kneel before the name of Hawkwing.  Finally, over a hundred years ago, the Consolidation had at last been completed.  It was now time, the Empress of the Nine Moons had decreed, for the _Corenne,_ for the descendants of Luthair's armies to take the word back to Hawkwing's home.  If Hawkwing's name was still honored, if his blood still held sway, then that was well; they would simply present the message that Hawkwing's command had been fulfilled.  If on the other hand, and as all but a tiny handful thought likely, Hawkwing's empire had fallen…..

The _Corenne_—the Return—had been in the planning for over a hundred years; the Empresses and the Blood had been amassing not only ships and soldiers and _damane,_ but also peasants, crafters, tradesmen and serfs, all the things that would be needed to help the Seanchan to begin this newest Consolidation.  If all went well, it was common knowledge, High Lady Suroth hoped—devoutly hoped—to be one of the _Hailene,_ the Forerunners of the Return.  

After a moment, Suroth continued, "The names of those who acquit themselves well here will be sung in Seandar, before the ears of the Empress herself, may she live forever, and they will be remembered when the time comes to choose the leaders of the _Hailene._  And when the leaders of the _Hailene_ choose those to go with them."  She eyed Briande over the rim of her _cuendillar_ cup and continued delicately, "Those of divided loyalties most likely will not be taken."

            Briande faced her now, meeting her eyes squarely; those delicate Other features hardened as Briande drew on every drop of the prestige that accorded to her.  "I am of Seanchan, my lady," she said, her voice as hard as the _cuendillar_ cup she held, firm enough to be on the edge of rudeness; Suroth did not call her down for it though, pleased as she was to see this assertion of faith.  "I live for the Empress.  I die for the Empress.  If it should come to pass—if the Wheel should weave that pattern—that I, unworthy as I am, should be one of those chosen to accompany the _Hailene,_ I would go at once, with nothing but devotion in my heart.  I am hers to command, to employ as the Empire sees fit."  Pure sincerity blazed in those pale eyes, as she gazed directly at Suroth.  She meant it, Suroth could see.  She meant every word she was saying, with all the conviction she possessed.  In truth, Suroth would have expected nothing else.  She had studied this _der'morat_'s three-hundred-year long career path with the raken, from stable _da'covale_ with the _to'raken_ to _morat'raken_ to _der'morat_ to Supreme _Der'Morat_, and at every turn it had been marked by nothing but total devotion, both to the Empire and to her career.

            "Excellent," Suroth said, nodding for she was well-pleased.  She continued in a somewhat gentler vein, "I ask because it would be a great detriment to the Empire to lose the skills of a _der'morat'raken_ of your caliber."  At Briande's startled, pleased look, Suroth smiled.  "Middle-Earth is to be a proving-ground of the Ever Victorious Army, Supreme _Der'Morat_, of the officers as well as the soldiers.  Those who do well will be rewarded; those who do poorly will be weeded out.  For you, however, as for the rest of the Others in the army, this proving ground may pose another challenge—the challenge of the call to your homeland.  I asked you this not to offend you, or to imply that your loyalty was in doubt, but simply because I must know where you stand, with the Empress or your homeland."

            "I stand with Seanchan," Briande replied in a voice that left no room for doubt.  "My homeland _is_ Seanchan.  My home city is Seandar.  My home ground is the ground that was given to me by the Empress Malaina, on the edge of the Sen T'jore, where the leopards skulk through the tangled forest vines.  And my _destiny,_" she continued strongly, her voice almost shaking with the force of her emotions, "should the Wheel weave it and the Empress will it, lies across the Aryth Ocean in the Westlands, at the forefront of the _Hailene—_"  She broke off then, as if realizing that she went too far, and dropped her eyes.  "If one so unworthy can presume that far," she murmured, staring down at the thin, bitter kaf within her cup.

            Suroth smiled again, looking at the pale, thin, serious Other before her.  "Very well, _der'morat,_" she said calmly.  "Then I may ask you about this realm, this Middle-Earth?"

            "Ask me anything," Briande replied at once.  "I will answer as I know best.   Seanchan has done well by me, and I am anxious to be of service to it in any way I know how."

            Suroth nodded.  "These Others," she said after a time, looking at Briande.  "Can they be trusted?"

            Briande frowned.  "Trusted, my lady?" she asked, seemingly puzzled.

            "Trusted.  On the heights, the paths are paved with daggers.  Surely you have heard that saying before?" Suroth asked, raising an eyebrow.  "I gained this assignment after I foiled a coup against the Empress.  You yourself were assigned to this expeditionary force after outstanding performance in crushing the rebellion in the southern provinces. You know that in times of turmoil, all do not think alike.  And I will tell you now."  She leaned forward from her cushions now, reaching to set her own cup of kaf down on the table, holding Briande with her eyes.  "_Nothing_ must be allowed to stand in the way of our success here.  If there is infighting or division among these Others, division that might become detrimental to the success of our Ever Victorious Army, I must know it.  I must know it, so that I can be prepared to crush it if need be.  And I _will_ crush it.  Because I will not allow our success—" and her chance to command the _Hailene,_ she did not say, and did not have to "—to be jeopardized by discord and scheming on behalf of the very ones we came to aid.  And I _certainly_ will not allow it to be backstabbed by Others working on behalf of this Enemy.  So I ask you now, Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken,_ and the highest ranking Other in the Ever Victorious Army if these Others can be trusted to work on our side, and to aid our success."

            Briande hesitated for a long moment, her frown growing deeper as she pondered Suroth's question.  She started to speak, then stopped, started and paused again.  Finally, chewing her lip, she said slowly, "That is…a difficult question, High Lady.  You must understand," she said, speaking slowly, as if she were remembering, perhaps, things long past, "these Others are not like us.  They are not like the Seanchan in many respects—"

            "How are they different?"

            "They aren't…they don't…"  She paused here for a long time, evidently thinking hard, then said at last, "They don't _scheme_ in the same way that we do….You know that it is said in Seandar that if there are not a dozen plots against the Empress going on at once, at the Court of the Nine Moons, then either the Empress has just indulged in a purge, or else she is so weak that she is not worth plotting against.  These Others do not plot in that fashion, and when they do plot, if I remember correctly, it is so obvious, so easy to see through, compared to the tangled, woven skeins of conspiracies spun in the Court of the Nine Moons, that a child could unravel them to their source.  These Others—and humans, for there are some humans among them—do not scheme in the same way.  However," she continued, holding up a hand, "that does not mean that they are not dangerous.  In Seanchan, the time when a plot against the Crystal Throne is hatched to the time it comes to fruition may take years, if not decades, and occasionally centuries," she said with a grim smile, recalling the Plot of the Golden Sun that had been exposed and crushed not twenty years ago.  "Here, when the Others or humans think a plot, they act almost at once.  And they are almost incapable of deception," she added, "compared to those of Seanchan, who may tell you the truth straight out and yet still be lying.  You must be careful, High Lady Suroth, when dealing with them not to read more than is said into their words.  Most often, when they speak they _are_ telling the truth, and all of it, and nothing but."

            Suroth frowned, tapping her lacquered nails against the _cuendillar_ surface of her cup.  "They sound….almost simple," she said at last, her brows drawing together slightly.

            "Not simple, High Lady," Briande corrected at once.  "Just different.  Different things are important here.  They are more concerned with matters of…oh, honor, and truthfulness, and plain dealing….trustworthiness, and valor…performing what you have promised…."  The _der'morat'raken_ trailed off, her brows drawing together.  Suroth might have taken offense at what the _der'morat_ said—it might have been construed to imply that those of the Empire were not honest and trustworthy and valorous—but she had always prided herself on the ability to recognize truth as truth when she saw it, and whatever the unpleasant implications of the words the Other was speaking, at the bottom they did indeed have the ring of truth.

            After a pause, in which both of them considered their thoughts, High Lady Suroth said musingly, only half-aware she spoke, "If I acted in that fashion in Seanchan, I would be dead within a month.  A _week_.  Dead, or so _sei'mosiev_ that there would be no return."

            Briande's frown deepened and she said only, again, "I suppose this is a world in which….such things are possible."

            Silence for a moment more, and then Suroth spoke briskly. "This afternoon there is to be a council on the use of…something…that Other Elrond called it the One Ring; I gather it is some form of _ter'angreal._  I wish you to attend this council; I need someone who knows of the habits of these Others to give me her opinion."

            Briande looked up sharply, and Suroth caught the traces of alarm that crossed her face.  "High Lady Suroth," she began, but Suroth continued over her.

            "You will be part of my retinue of body-guards, in full ceremonial armor.  Keep your helmet on at all times," she added, smiling.  "I do not wish to tip the hand of these Others yet to the fact that we have Others within our ranks."

             Briande looked visibly relieved.  "Yes, High Lady.  You order and I obey."

            "That is all.  You may go."  

            Briande bowed deeply to the High Lady, then rose.  As she brushed the hangings aside on her way out, Suroth looked after her, frowning and lost in thought.


	3. Council of War

The council was originally to be held on a low porch outside the main body of the house, but had been moved to a low terrace in one of the garden plots surrounding the house; High Lady Suroth's retinue was too large to be easily accomodated at the original site and she had absolutely refused to move on the issue of her attendants.  Rightfully so; it would have been a great disgrace to her, and a great loss of _sei'taer_, if she had been forced to disquantity her train. Still, Keille thought as she took her place behind High Lady Suroth's seat, in full armor and her face-guard lowered, with Briande on her left, this Elrond of the Others did not look pleased.  His storm-gray eyes rested on the crowd of people behind Suroth with a distant sort of chill; Keille found herself wondering how Suroth had managed to convince this Other to let her retain such a sizeable train.

            Slowly she ran her eyes over the assembled.  Keille and Briande were there for High Lady Suroth among her bodyguards, along with several of the _so'jhin_, also armed, though purely for show, and her Captain of the Ground Forces, Maekel Etari.  Her two Supreme _Der'Morat'To'raken_ also stood behind her chair, as did her Supreme _Der'Morat'Grolm, Torm, Corlm, _and L_opar._  Her Supreme _Der'Sul'dam_ was also present, Eilei Katrell, a round, motherly-looking woman with features assembled into an expression of uncharacteristic sternness; the oldest and most powerful of the _damane,_ Alivia, knelt at her feet, with the silver leash that bound _damane_ to _sul'dam_ coiled beside her.  Keille had seen the Others giving her strange looks since the moment the pair had appeared.  There were more than one kind of Others, something Keille had not expected.  There were the tall, thin Others that Keille knew a little—Briande was one of them; they had been filtering into Seanchan for the last thousand years or so—but there were also short Others, with long beards, carrying axes, and one other Other—it was all so confusing.  She nudged Briande and hissed into her ear, "What are the short Others called?"

            "Dwarves," Briande responded in an undertone.  "The unarmed one is a hobbit."

            _Hobbit._  Strange word—of course, they were strange people.  There were also humans, she saw.  All men.   Did these people not have _marath'damane?_  Did they have or need no _sul'dam_ to keep them bound?  She would have to remember to ask Briande when she had more time, and Briande had more time, to answer at length.  The human called Aragorn seemed to be the leader of the human delegation, but another of the humans had already crossed him publicly; Keille had been shocked, beyond shocked—how could he weather such disrespect without becoming _sei'mosiev?_  She had waited for him to control his inferior, but no such thing had happened; Keille had concluded that he must not be very powerful, if he tolerated such disrespect. 

             Briande was strangely silent, had been since they had taken their places behind High Lady Suroth's chair; Keille could not see much of her expression behind her mandible-like face guard, but she looked unusually tense and pensive.  Her eyes in the shadow of her helmet spent most of their time roaming the faces of the tall, thin Others, fixing in particular on the Other Elrond.  It was odd, Keille couldn't explain it, but Briande seemed—nervous, almost, as if she were afraid of him, or of what he might do.  She was being especially formal and distant, as if she were hoping to blend into the background of High Lady Suroth's retinue; Keille tried to help her by mirroring Briande's stance and motions as much as she could, attempting to draw eyes away from her _der'morat'raken_.

            Now the Other Elrond gestured to the weaponless short Other—_hobbit_—Keille reminded herself.  "Frodo," he commanded sternly.  "Bring forth the ring."

            _The ring._  Keille watched with interest as the short little Other with curly hair swallowed, reached into his shirt, and brought forth an entirely unremarkable-looking circle of gold on a chain.  He advanced, looking nervous, and laid it reluctantly on a table in the middle of the group.  Keille noticed that his fingers lingered on it, as if he were reluctant to put it down.

            At his producing this unremarkable object, the Others assembled broke out into hushed whispers and awed gazes; in particular, the man who had crossed Aragorn before seemed fascinated with it.  Indeed, the entire tenor of the assemblage seemed to change; as Keille watched, this unprepossessing ring seemed to be the focus of a good deal of fascinated, enraptured stares.  There was something almost disturbing in the quality of the attention being accorded to the ring; she could only compare it to the look she had seen a _sul'dam_ too long from handling an _a'dam_ accord a _damane_.  It was not a comparison she found comforting; indeed this strange attention that this ring seemed to be eliciting from the gathering of Others and humans was more than a little eerie.  Even the more so since Keille could see no _reason_ for it.  What was in this small circle of gold to elicit such fascinated and enrapt attention from the entire gathering?  She risked sneaking a quick look around the Seanchan delegation to see if it were hypnotizing them in the same way, and found that it did not seem to be; the Seanchan looked curious, of course, and mildly interested, but lacked that concerning look of fascination that she beheld in this delegation from Middle-Earth.

            Suroth was speaking now, from where she sat enthroned in state.  "This is the _ter'angreal_ you spoke of?" she asked, the soothing slurring tones of the Seanchan voice falling gently on Keille's ears.

            Elrond of the Others looked at her, his brows drawing together in what Keille thought was probably faint irritation.  "I do not know this word _ter'angreal,_" he replied.  "This is the One Ring.  In the Second Age, this Ring was forged by the Enemy in the Cracks of Doom, to enable him to gain control of the other Rings of Power, and thereby to enslave the people of Middle-Earth.  It was only at great cost that he was defeated," the Other said, his gray eyes darkening for a moment as if in memory.  "The Ring should have been destroyed then, but for the weakness of Men," he continued, the faintest trace of bitterness entering his tone.  "For Isildur kept the ring for his own, until it betrayed him and slipped from his finger, exposing him to the sight of his enemies and destroying him.  And so the Bane survived to threaten the world—what are you doing?"

            The Other's voice sharpened precipitously with alarm as High Lady Suroth rose from her chair.  Calmly she reached out and took the ring from its resting place on the table.

            A collective gasp sounded in the air as she raised it to eye level, and one of the delegates—he looked human, but was not clad like the others, dressed instead in gray—rose to his own feet in alarm.  "Return the Ring at once!" he ordered, his voice sharp with some unnamed emotion.  "You know not what you do—"

            Suroth took no note of this collective alarm, turning the ring over in her hands and examining it.  After a moment, she turned and handed it to the Supreme _Der'Sul'dam,_ who drew the _damane_ to her feet with a brisk tug on the leash and accepted the ring.  "_Der'Sul'dam_ Katrell, what do you make of this?" High Lady Suroth asked calmly.  

            Eilei Katrell frowned, peering down at it in her hand, and then drew the _damane_ Alivia near her.  Keille noticed the rest of the delegates were almost silent as they watched this, as if they were afraid to make a sound.  Many of them were wearing an expression of open shock, as if watching someone doing something incredibly foolish such as stick their hand in a _lopar'_s mouth.  The man who had crossed Aragorn—_Boromir,_ Keille thought—was staring at the Seanchan as if he had just seen a stone grow wings; she saw shock on his face and something else—something she could not be sure of.

 Katrell held the ring out to her _damane_ to inspect.  "Alivia," she said, enunciating precisely.  "What is it, Alivia?  Can you tell?  What is it?"

            The _damane_'s own brows drew together as she examined the ring.  After a moment, with an expression of puzzlement, she looked up at the woman who held her leash.  "I cannot say, Mistress Katrell.  If it is a _ter'angreal,_ it is unlike any I have seen before.  It—" here she and the sul'dam both frowned, and Keille guessed that she was channeling "—it does not react to any of the Five Powers."

            Eilei shrugged and handed the ring back to Suroth.  "My _damane_ has never seen anything like it before," she told the High Lady.  "Neither have I, in truth.  I do not know what it could be.  It is almost as if—as if it does not use _saidar_ at all--"

            She broke off abruptly, her face paling as she thought through the implications, but it was too late.  As one, the entire Seanchan cohort went still.  For if this _ter'angreal_ did not use _saidar_…..then it must use….

            Keille felt her blood run cold within her.  Suroth actually sucked in her breath, paling at least three shades herself.  The ring actually fell from her nerveless fingers and she took three rapid steps back in shock before recollecting herself.  The rest of the Seanchan flinched back as well, collectively; Keille stepped back herself in fear.  Because if the ring did not use _saidar,_ then it must use tainted _saidin._  Suroth was surreptitiously scrubbing her hand against her leg, Keille saw.  Eilei snorted.

            "There is nothing to fear, High Lady Suroth," the _der'sul'dam _said in a dry, flat voice.  "The taint is locked in the _ter'angreal_ in cases such as these; it cannot harm you unless you use it.  And it might not be able to harm a woman at all, depending."

            Whatever Suroth might have said was effaced by a cry from the little Other who had produced the ring; he darted forward under the stern gaze of the High Lady and scooped it up from the floor, cradling it protectively.  He glared back at her with such anger that several of the _so'jhin_ shifted their stance; and indeed, Keille herself hissed in shock. 

            "Don't do that!" he shouted at her.  "The ring is—is not to be toyed with in that way—"  Suroth's eyes widened in disbelief—Keille was shocked too; _nobody _except perhaps a _soe'feia _Truthspeaker could address one of the High Blood in such a fashion—and she stepped forward half a pace without seeming to realize what she was doing; the little Other suddenly recollected himself, swallowed, and retreated before her.

            However, this Elrond of the Others came to the little Other's defense, looking thunderous—and more than that, Keille thought; he looked the way that the _der'morat_ in charge of her training had looked when she caught Keille learning to shift upside down in her _raken_ straps; he looked at her as if he were seeing someone so amazingly stupid and foolhardy that it was scarcely to be believed.  "Frodo is right," Elrond said in a stern and terrible voice, looking angrily at High Lady Suroth.  "This is the One Ring, an artifact of great and dark power.  You should not have done that," he warned her darkly.  "The Ring is too great for any who dare possess it, mortal, Elf, Dwarf, or even hobbit in the end.  You must never, never seek to touch it again lest it catch your mind and ensnare you as it did Isildur—"

            "I felt nothing," High Lady Suroth said calmly, looking back at this Other in an unimpressed manner.  As his face froze, she turned to look at Eilei.  "_Der'Sul'dam_ Katrell, did you detect any unusual sensations when you handled the _ter'angreal?_"

            "I did not, High Lady Suroth," Eilei replied, "and neither did my _damane_ Alivia.  If it is a _ter'angreal_ with an effect on the mind—as is the Crystal Throne itself—perhaps it has no effect on women," she suggested, looking past Suroth's shoulder at this Elrond of the Others; the Other's face was still frozen, and he was staring at her with a look that Keille could best describe as disbelief.  "Such a thing is not unknown when it comes to objects created with the One Power, particularly if this _ter'angreal_ operates through use of _saidin_.  It may be," she continued, "that the _ter'angreal_ was held before by male channelers, and that it functions to somehow increase the actions of the taint on the male's mind.  Fragments left over from the beginning of the Breaking of the World mention the creation of a _sa'angreal_ that had that unfortunate side-effect on male channelers, making it in effect too dangerous to be used unless certain unspecified precautions were taken.  This may be the reason that High Lady Suroth and I felt nothing."

            Keille nudged her partner Briande as Eilei was speaking.  "Maybe that's why," she whispered up at her, "but it's got to be something, because did you _see_ the looks on all their faces when that little Other brought it out?  That was certainly creepy—Briande?" she hissed, realizing that her friend was not answering.  "Briande?  _Briande?_"  

            Briande did not answer, did not even look at her.  Through the face guard of her helmet, Keille could discern enough to see what her expression was, and a chill ran down her spine as she saw it.  Keille followed the line of her gaze.  A cold sensation of dread spread over her as she realized that her friend was watching the ring where it hung from the little Other's fingers, watching it with a look of fixed intensity the likes of which Keille had not seen in her before.  _What _is_ this thing?_ she wondered desperately.  _How can it catch the minds of these Others—how can it catch the mind of Briande?  Why don't I feel it?  Is there something wrong with me? With _all_ of us Seanchan?  Briande is female, so it can't be what Katrell suggested_—  Moving surreptitiously, she kicked her friend in the shins.  

            _"Briande!_" she hissed in an undertone.  With a start, her friend returned to herself.

            "Keille?" she replied in a whisper.  "What—"

            "Never mind.  Just watch."

            Eilei had ended her scholarly digression; the Other Elrond looked almost shaken, as well as did the gray-clad human man who stood beside him.  The two of them turned and exchanged a long glance.  After a moment, the Other came to himself as well.  "Whatever the reason may be," he asserted strongly, "_do not_ attempt to handle the ring again.  It must not be treated in so cavalier a fashion—" and here, Keille could have sworn that she was hearing hints of some other, deeper bitterness buried beneath the surface anger in the Other's voice.  "Do not underestimate its power," he warned again, "lest you find that it has snared you unawares."

            "On the contrary," Eilei responded calmly, looking now past the Other and at the strange little Other.  "You are the one who should be careful, little one," she warned him.  "If that _ter'angreal_ uses _saidin, then it will be hazardous to any who uses it.  There is more than a chance, there is a probability, that with each use, the residue of the taint upon _saidin_ will be left within your body.   In time, this residue will drive you mad, and cause your body to waste away.  You should not use this ring ever again, and even now it may be too late."_

            The little Other now looked very frightened, she observed, and confused, looking from Eilei to Elrond as if he did not know what to believe.  Keille felt for him.  She did not like anything to do with the One Power, although one of her sisters had gone for a _sul'dam_, and if it had to do with _saidin it was ten times worse.  __What man would ever want_ to channel?_ she mused to herself.  __Or to have anything to do with channeling, knowing the fate that awaits them? _

            The discussion about the Ring dragged on after that and Keille found her mind wandering; her feet were beginning to hurt and her ceremonial painted armor—armor that she never ever wore while on _raken_-back, for it would be far too heavy for poor Iraumu to carry—was not only weighing down on her, but it was hot and she was bored.  Her attention wandered in and out, although from time to time she would focus in on Briande, to see how her partner was doing.  The little Other who had held the ring had laid it, even more reluctantly, back down on the table, and his eyes kept wandering back to it; Keille saw that her friend Briande's eyes did the same, as did the gazes of the other Others gathered around the table.  The more Keille saw of that strange circlet of gold and its effect on those whose land it was a part of, the less she liked it.  _And why should it affect Briande that way?  Briande is Seanchan now._  She kicked Briande in the shins whenever she noticed that Briande was staring at the ring too intently.

            Keille came back to herself with a start when the man who had challenged Aragorn earlier—Boromir, she thought his name was—asserted insistently, "I say that we take this ring and use it against the Enemy!"

            "Do not be a fool," the Other Elrond reproved him sternly.  "This ring was made by the Enemy and cannot be used against him; any attempt to do so will surely end in failure."

            "Why?" Boromir demanded, turning to face the whole assemblage of delegates now, Seanchan and Other alike.  "Why can it not be used against him?  It is an object of power, and surely we can find a way to use that power for our own benefit!  We should take it and use it to bring us victory—"

            "Isildur thought so," the gray-clad human said now, rising to his feet.  "Isildur thought in the same fashion.   Would you have your fate be his?"

            Boromir looked at the hard, unified gazes of the Other Elrond, and the apparent human Gandalf, then he shook his head in desperate denial.  "It need not be!" Boromir insisted.  "Might it not be that the very workings of Fate itself has placed the ring into our grasp to be our final hope?  We—we have aid now!  High Lady Suroth," he said, turning to the Seanchan woman.  "Can these Seanchan not help us?  High Lady Suroth, what say you to my plan?" he appealed to her, seeing that his words fell on deaf ears among those of his own people.

            Keille turned her attention to High Lady Suroth where she had returned to her seat.  Suroth raised one eyebrow, then looked at her _Der'Sul'dam._  "_Der'Sul'dam_ Katrell, you command the army in all things having to do with the One Power, what say you?  May this ring safely be used against this Enemy?"

            "No," Eilei said at once, coming forward a step now.  "The ring does not use _saidar,_ therefore it must use tainted _saidin.  In this instance the Other Elrond and this Gandalf are correct.  Not only can the ring not be used against the enemy, it should not be used at all.  Whoever uses it will most likely do nothing but expose themselves to the taint upon __saidin, and condemn themselves to die of the same insanity and rot that afflicts men who can channel."  Keille saw confused glances thrown among the Others of Middle-Earth at this, and wondered at it.  _Do they not know of the taint upon _saidin__?  How is that possible?  Surely the Breaking of the World must have affected even here….  "Even if they do not accumulate the taint within themselves, all the works that come from it might be warped, in the same fashion as the Ways were warped by the action of the taint.  No, High Lady Suroth, this _ter'angreal_ is not safe to use," she concluded with a slight bow in the direction of the Blood._

            "I must say I concur with my Supreme _Der'Sul'dam_ in this instance," Suroth said calmly.  "The fact that this artifact uses the tainted male source of the One Power is enough to convince me that it must not be used.  There is no known way to heal or undo the damage caused by the taint.  It is simply not safe."  She spoke those final words with the finality of a death sentence, and Keille saw frustration leap in the human man's eyes.

            "Then what is to be done with this ring, if we are too craven to use it?" he demanded angrily.

            Suroth shrugged, and lifted her eyes to gaze inquiringly at the Others.  Keille followed her look to this Elrond of the Others.  He closed his eyes, bowing his head for a moment, then sighed.  

            "There is only one thing to be done with this ring," he said at length.  "And that undertaking will be difficult indeed.  What must be done with it is what Isildur originally attempted to do, but was prevented.  The ring must be destroyed."

            He said no more, but remained with his eyes closed, as if gathering the strength to say what came next.  However, he never got the chance.  "I concur."  High Lady Suroth broke in now, her voice cool, her face as always expressionless.  Elrond of the Others and Gandalf both turned to look at her in surprise; Suroth did not seem to notice.  "This _ter'angreal is too dangerous an artifact to be let running around loose.  Furthermore, the loss of an object that uses tainted __saidin is always something to be sought, if possible.  And since it must be destroyed—__Der'Sul'dam?"_

            "High Lady!"  Eilei responded with a smart crispness.  She gave a sharp tug on the _a'dam leash, drawing the _damane_ Alivia to her feet, and advanced three paces, the well-trained _damane_ taking five to end up ahead of and slightly to the left of her mistress.  Eilei's green eyes sought those of the Others near the ring.  "Stand clear," she ordered sharply._

            "What are you—" Gandalf began, but did not get a chance to finish the sentence, as Suroth interrupted.  "_Der'Sul'dam, at will!"_

            "Yes, High Lady!" Eilei responded sharply.  "_Damane Alivia!  Balefire!"_

            Quickly, those near the ring stepped back; not a moment too soon, as the _damane raised her hands.  Keille's skin crawled in anticipation; she knew of the powers of the __damane—her own sister had gone for a _sul'dam_—but it always unsettled her to see those eerie powers in action._

            "Stop!" Gandalf cried now, perhaps beginning to understand.  "You don't know what—"

            A white-hot bar of fire leapt from the _damane's_ hands, crackling as it drew a connecting line between the _damane and the ring and table upon which it sat.  The table flashed white, then black, then vanished into non-existence.  At the same moment a horrible __wrenching sensation twisted the area, as if reality were trying to shift itself sideways. Keille staggered, and she saw the short Other who had held the ring collapse to the ground._

            The ring hit the earth beneath the table and paving stones, a perfect circle in which tall grass and flowers now grew, and was not harmed.

            "What _was that?" Keille heard herself asking in the rising uproar of tumult, both from the Seanchan delegation and the delegation of others; nobody heeded her, or she would have been very _sei'mosiev_ to speak out of turn like this.  "It must be __cuendillar,but __cuendillar doesn't do that—"_

            "It is not destroyed?" High Lady Suroth asked over the din.  "_Der'Sul'dam!"_

            "_Damane Alivia!" Eilei called, yanking the leash hard.  "Again!  Stronger!"_

            "No, _wait!" the Other Elrond shouted, stretching out a hand._

            The resultant concussion, Keille noticed, almost threw him to the ground—it _did throw her to the ground briefly, as the _damane_ let loose with a thread of balefire twice as thick as she had used before.  It seared its way across her sight, brighter than the sun, and as it touched the ring it seemed as if the world had tipped itself up on end and everything was sliding off the side.  Alivia herself reeled, and it was only the tug on the leash by the __sul'dam that kept her straight.  The grass disappeared from around the ring, as well as the paving stones for about a foot in every direction.  In the center of the patch of bare earth, the ring gleamed dully._

If there had been an uproar before there was pandemonium now, as the Others all spoke on top of each other, demanding that the Seanchan tell them what it was that had been done, shouting about the safety of the ring, wanting to know what that wrenching effect had been.  The Seanchan delegation matched them noise for noise, as they all broke their decorum to crowd forward enough to see the ring.  

"Impossible!" hissed Suroth when she caught sight of it.  "It still exists?"

            "But what can stand up to balefire?" demanded Maekel Etari, stepping forward.

            Suroth turned back to Eilei.  "_Der'Sul'dam!_"

            "Yes, High Lady!  _Damane_ Alivia!  Full strength!"

            A skein of balefire as thick around as Keille's waist launched from the hands of the _damane_ to intercept the ring.  There was a flash, black against white, as it touched, and reality _stretched_, as thin and weak as _altjar_ cloth.  Images came to Keille in flashes—the _damane_, eyes narrowed to slits to shield her from the brilliance of the fire in her hands, the shaft of balefire itself, so bright that it burned when she looked at it, the ring, which was glowing on its own in reaction to the balefire, the high sound of wailing coming from somewhere she could not identify, most likely the little Other who had held the ring she thought later; a whining hum in her ears that set her teeth on edge, her own breath, rushing into and out of her lungs, Briande, with one hand flung up to shield her face.  She was seeing double, triple, quadruple, as everything split and mirrored itself four, five, a dozen times into infinity….

            Then there was a _snap_ as everything returned to normal.

            _"STOP!!_"

            The shout came from this Elrond of the Others, Keille saw, picking herself up off the ground; he had moved swiftly to position himself between Alivia and the ring.  He looked nothing less than absolutely furious, Keille saw, and along with fury, she saw raw fear in his face.  He was almost trembling with the mixture of anger and fear, and Keille watched with interest; she had never seen one of the Others in such a state before, had not even known that they could become this undone.  He stared at Suroth, fighting to control himself; behind him, Keille saw the little Other who had carried the ring on his knees with his hands pressed to either side of his head.

            After a long, tense moment of struggle, the other Other demanded of Suroth, his voice trembling with fury, "Have you _taken leave of your senses?_  What did you think you were _doing?!"_

            "It was our agreement that the ring had to be destroyed," Suroth responded calmly.  "Or did I misunderstand you?  I assumed that balefire—"

            Elrond of the Others cut her off, his voice still tight with anger.  "I know not this _balefire,_ but if you had stopped to _listen,_ you would have known that this ring _cannot_ be destroyed in such a fashion!  If you—"  He stopped himself with an effort, and continued, speaking in very precise, clipped sentences as if to a child or one not intelligent enough to understand.  "This ring, the One Ring, may only be _destroyed_ where it was _created.  In the land of Mordor, in the fires of the Cracks of Doom.  What you just __tried—"  He stopped himself again and gestured sharply.  "This meeting is adjourned.  We will reconvene tomorrow to discuss this at greater length."_

            High Lady Suroth lifted her shoulders in a shrug.  "As you wish," she said calmly; she rose from her seat and with a gesture to her retinue, turned to depart. 

            _Insane.  These Seanchan are insane.  _

            As this High Lady Suroth led her sizeable retinue from the courtyard, her composure utterly unaffected, Elrond clenched his fists in an attempt to control himself, to fight down the tide of fury and fear mixed that roiled through him.

            _They are insane.  There is no other explanation.  Insane._

            What had _been that bar of white fire unleashed by the strange chained woman at the One Ring?  What had they done, or tried to do?  Whatever it was, it had utterly destroyed not just the table the ring had been sitting on, but the very stones of the courtyard in all directions around it, and that—effect—that had been produced.  That they would dare—would __dare—  And how—__how—had the High Lady been able to handle it without being touched by it?  Even he felt the pull of the Ring as Frodo had laid it on the table, he, and he knew its history, its dangers; felt the call of the Ring to his own ring of power, Vilya, and was able to resist it only through a supreme effort of will.  And High Lady Suroth—and more, the two chained women—the entire Seanchan delegation—had been utterly unaffected.  Unaffected by the Ring that reflected gold in even Aragorn's eyes._

            No, he realized as these insane Seanchan filed slowly from the courtyard, they had not been _all unaffected; there had been one among the Seanchan delegation—tall, and paired with a much shorter Seanchan—who had seemed to feel the pull.  How he knew, he could not be sure, as he had never been able to see her expression behind the mandibles of that one's insectile helmet.  But the Seanchan had seemed to react to it, somehow.  She—somehow, again, he was sure it was _she_; these Seanchan let their women fight alongside their men—seemed somehow familiar to him.  His eyes fixed on that soldier, unseeing, as he pondered._

            Underneath the roiling anger caused by these Seanchan's unparalleled arrogance—all Men were arrogant, he had known this for a long, long time, but High Lady Suroth was in a class by herself—there was a deep vein of fear.  Because these Seanchan were insane.  Worse, they were arrogant in their insanity.  They knew _nothing_ of the One Ring, nothing of its power, its history, its forging at the hands of the Enemy to bring the Rings of the other peoples under his sway, and yet knowing nothing they came here and presumed to control it.  _They fence it in with words like ter'angreal__ and saidin—__words which I have never heard in all my life,_ if they even have meaning,_ he thought bitterly, _and then presume they understand it.  That they understand it enough to destroy it.  And to destroy it—__

            --they unleashed an art the likes of which he had never seen before.  

            That white-hot bar of fire.  What had _been—_

            Not even during the first War of the Ring had he ever seen anything like that.  Not even the Enemy Sauron—

            The Ring.  _What had happened when it touched the ring?_

            He was dimly aware of Mithrandir standing beside him, seeming as deeply shaken as he was; he dimly heard the Ringbearer whimpering in the background—the assault on the Ring must have affected him too; Elrond knew well the way in which the Rings bound themselves to their bearers—yet Elrond had no thought to spare for them.  No thought to spare for anything but what had just happened.

            _Who are__ these Seanchan?  They come from across the Sea—they come with arts and creatures which are unknown to us—_

             --from across the Sea.

            That was a thought which Elrond had been deliberately avoiding since the moment the first of the strange flying creatures had come diving onto his front lawn, bearing messages and an offer; yet it kept slyly surfacing at the back of his thoughts.  These Seanchan came from across the Sea.  The time of his people in Middle-Earth was drawing to an end.  Soon they were to return across the Sea, to Valinor, the Undying Lands.  Yet the Seanchan—

            Again, he annihilated that thought.  He would deal with that later.  He would deal with that when he had time, space to breathe, to think.  When the war with the Enemy was not so imminent.

            _Yet who are_ these Seanchan?__

            And then—

            The soldier he was watching—somehow he could tell it was female, even through the shell of armor wrapped around her body—was taking her turn to leave, filing after the High Lady Suroth.  Afterwards he was never able to recall what it was that had betrayed this warrior to him—but at that moment the vague air of familiarity snapped into place.  Perhaps it was the way she was walking, the way she moved her arms that was so familiar, calling up memories five hundred years gone but as fresh and painful as salt in a raw wound, but at that moment he _knew._

            A cold sensation filled his chest, clutched at his heart.  It could not be, he thought to himself distantly, desperately.  It could not be, of course not, there was no way, and yet he was sure.  A sort of hideous logic clutched at him even as the revelation surged over him.  _These Seanchan came from beyond the Sea.  Celebrian has gone—beyond the Sea.  This soldier—_

            He barely recognized his voice when he spoke.  He had spoken without conscious volition; he did not know he had spoken until after the fact.  His voice was trembling, shaking with disbelief, denial, as he called out to the soldier, "Celebrian?"

            He was dimly aware of the sharp, shocked gazes of Mithrandir, Aragorn, the rest of the delegations of Middle-Earth, but they were in an0ther world.  All his attention was locked on this soldier, this soldier of these insane Seanchan whom he was somehow, crazily certain, was his wife.

            And her reaction proved it.  Oh, she did not turn and embrace him; she did not call out to him, did not even speak back.  But she stumbled, jerked as if stung, at the moment he called out.  Almost as if she had been expecting such an overture.

            Unheeding of those around him, he started toward her, reaching out desperately.  "Celebrian—I—"

            But the soldier, if Celebrian it was—and of course it _wasn't,_ couldn't be, yet he was somehow sure that it _was_—ignored him, and hurried from the square, her face averted.

            As the Seanchan returned to their campsite, tension was running high.  

            "_Der'Sul'dam Katrell," High Lady Suroth demanded, "what happened when you attempted to balefire the __ter'angreal?"  She was angry, and frightened as well; Keille could hear it beneath her usual mask of calm control.  _It must be a day for firsts_, she mused; she had not known that the Others could become angry, and now she was seeing a High Lady in such a state.  Suroth's anger frightened her, because if a Blooded Lady was showing this much distress…._

            "I do not know, High Lady," was Eilei's only answer.  The _der'sul'dam appeared shaken, no less so than her _damane_.  "I have never _seen_ anything that can resist balefire like that, except _cuendillar_…."_

            "Is it possible that the _ter'angreal_ was made out of _cuendillar?_"  High Lady Suroth had turned to Briande to answer this question, Keille saw. 

            Briande seemed somewhat distracted, then seemed to recall herself.  "What?  Oh….No, High Lady Suroth.  _Cuendillar is not known in these lands."_

            "Then how could it resist balefire?" Suroth demanded of her retinue again, looking at them all.  "And furthermore, what was the wrenching sensation that came when the balefire touched the _ter'angreal?"  _

            Silence.  Keille herself knew so little about the One Power and issues with it that she did not even try to answer.  Suroth stopped in the middle of the camp lane, looking at her retinue, waiting.  At last, it was Briande who spoke.

            "High Lady Suroth, if I may?"

            "By all means."

            "This ring—this One Ring—"  She paused again, as if bringing up memories a long time buried.  "This One Ring is very vitally important to the structure of this land.  I have heard—please, _Der'Sul'dam, by all means, correct me if I am wrong—that balefire destroys something utterly, that it burns the object's thread out of the Pattern for once and for all, and that it causes this effect _before _the balefire touches the object.  Is this not the case?" she asked, appealing to Eilei._

            "Close enough," Eilei verified.  "Furthermore, the stronger the balefire, the farther back in time the object's thread will be erased, and all consequences from the existence of that object will be undone.  As you can gather, this can have a tremendous effect on the Pattern, and is why during the Great War of Power, at the end of the Age of Legends, both sides simply stopped using balefire.  Whole cities were erased by the use of it, and the Pattern came close to unraveling completely.  There was no sense to fighting to rule the world if the world itself would cease to exist."

            "Then perhaps that is why balefire did not work on the ring, High Lady Suroth," Briande suggested.  "The One Ring is extremely important to this land; in fact, it might be fair to say that the Ring is the thread that this land is woven around.  If it were possible for an object itself to be _ta'veren,_ this ring might be it.  Since the ring is so vital to the fabric of this land, perhaps the Pattern itself acted to protect the ring and refused to allow it to be sacrificed.  That might also explain the wrenching sensation experienced when the ring was balefired; the Pattern of this land was being twisted out of shape by the attempt to remove the thread of the ring."

High Lady Suroth frowned at the _Der'Morat'Raken.  "That is impossible," she said at once, her voice the slightest bit unsteady_._  "The Pattern does not act in that fashion.  It _cannot_ act in that fashion.  Ask any one of the Pattern-readers—"_

"I am sorry, High Lady Suroth," Briande said humbly, "but that is the only explanation I can think of."

There was silence for a moment as the Seanchan thought; it was to Katrell that Suroth addressed her next question.  "How do we destroy it, if it is to be destroyed?"  
            "Oh, it should be, High Lady, be not mistaken about that," spoke Eilei.  "It does not use _saidar, so therefore it must use _saidin_.  As that is the case, all acts done with it must come to evil.  I do not know how it may be destroyed as yet.  Rest assured that I will discuss this problem with my _sul'dam_ and if it can be done, we will find a way."_

"See that you do," High Lady Suroth said sternly, regarding her _der'sul'dam_.  "The Other Elrond did not seem to think that a channeller could perform such a feat."

Eilei smiled with cynical confidence up at Suroth.  "The Other Elrond has never seen a _sul'dam_ and _damane_ in action.  When we are complete, there is nothing in this world or any other that we cannot do."  Here she turned and smiled at Alivia, who was walking as usual ahead and slightly to the left of her—making the way safe for her _sul'dam.  The silver lead between then almost dragged on the ground.  Alivia looked back over her shoulder and smiled at her mistress as well.   "I will discuss this problem with my __sul'dam and we should have several possibilities by tomorrow."_

"Should we attempt to get the ring from the little Other who holds it?" Maekel Etari spoke now, his voice gruff.  "Remember, under the laws of Seanchan all _ter'angreal are in reality the property of the Crystal Throne, whatever those holding them like to believe.  I myself think it would be better for this ring to be in the hands of those who know what to do with it.  Frankly, these Others all sound rather cowardly to me—no offense, _Der'Morat—_"_

"None taken," Briande replied smoothly.

"By your leave, High Lady Suroth, but the idea of that human Boromir was the only brave idea to come out of the whole meeting and then he got shouted down by the others—"

"Indeed, Ground Captain Etari," Suroth replied, "but the _Der'Sul'dam_ herself said that it should be destroyed."

"Oh, I know that, I'm not arguing that, but _Der'Sul'dam Katrell's statement had sound reasoning behind it.  Not one of these Others offered any sound __reason why the ring should be destroyed, just a lot of vague maunderings about how during some war sometime the ring had been held by some evil one.  Such a _ter'angreal_ might be better off in the hands of those who are brave enough to deal with it."_

Suroth frowned, pondering.  At last she said, "No, not yet and not for the foreseeable future.  These Others seem to have strange ideas concerning this ring.  I fear they would not take kindly any attempt by us to commandeer it in the name of the Empress of the Nine Moons.  Wait until we are sure we know how to destroy it and then we will attempt to get the little Other to cede it."

Captain of the Ground Forces Etari bowed his head.  "As you say, so shall it be, High Lady Suroth." 

_Der'Sul'dam_ Katrell now tugged at her _damane's_ leash.  "By your leave, High Lady Suroth, I will take Alivia to the _damane_ kennels now.  She has had a trying afternoon and is unsettled; she needs to rest."

"Certainly, _Der'Sul'dam."  Suroth turned and looked at the others.  "As for the rest of you, consider yourself dismissed until further notice."_

All murmured their obeisances as the little group broke up.

            "What was that strange Other calling to you for?" Keille asked Briande, unbuckling her helmet from her head and swinging it by its strap as the column behind High Lady Suroth dispersed to their various locations of camp.

            "I don't know," Briande responded and pressed her lips together tightly, looking away.   

            "What name did he call you?  Celebrian?" Keille continued, looking up at her friend with interest.

            "I really couldn't say."  Briande was wearing her that's-my-story-and-I'm-sticking-to-it expression that Keille had only seen on her face a few times before.  The shorter human grinned.

            "He's kind of cute for an Other.  Why didn't you tell me you had a tragic affair in your background, Briande?  I—"

            Keille broke off as Briande whirled toward her as if stung.  "I _told_ you," she said in a deathly quiet voice, her face chill with seriousness, "I know _nothing_ about him.  Do you understand?"

            "Yes, Briande," Keille replied in a subdued tone.

            "I'm serious, Keille," Briande repeated, her pale eyes boring into her backrider.  "Do you _understand?"_

            Keille nodded, much chastened.

            "Good.  Now come.  The Third Raken Flight is due back from a reconnaissance sweep.  We should be there to meet them."  She hastened down the lane between the tents—the green grass of the fields of this Rivendell already trodden to brown muck by many feet walking over it—and turned off toward the _raken section of the encampment. _


	4. Elves and Others

It was not until evening that Elrond, shaken to the core of his being, was able to slip away from his duties.  Mithrandir, Aragorn, Boromir of Gondor, the Dwarves led by Gimli, and the other delegates had all wanted to discuss the actions of the Seanchan at great length, arguing about the power shown by the strange chained women, the attempt to destroy the Ring, the nature of the Seanchan delegates.  Objectively, Elrond could not blame them.  If his mind were not occupied by the matter of his wife, he might feel the same.  However, his thoughts were so taken up with Celebrian that he had little room to spare for any other matters.  He knew that it was not good for his mind to be so occupied, but he could not help it.

            At last the meeting of the other delegates had adjourned and he had been able to slip out one of the back doors, to the once-green fields that surrounded the Last Homely Home, the fields where the Seanchan were now encamped.

            Extensive changes had been made to the fields in the few days the Seanchan had been there, he saw with rue in his heart.  The delicate green turf that had always been Arwen's pride had been cut to shreds by sharp hooves and deep carriage wheels; the dark loam underneath, so rich for growing, had been churned to mud by the passage of many feet.  Tents were set up in neat, square blocks, an arrangement that was supposedly only temporary but had all the look of becoming permanent.  It was a look that troubled Elrond, though he sternly suppressed the feeling and the thought alike.

            Yellow firelight and lamplight came through the rows of tents, throwing patches of illumination on the churned and uneven ground.  Men—and women, he saw—were gathered in circles around these fires, dicing, or drinking, or dancing; snatches of song came to him here and there:

_Your girl will marry another man_

_            And a muddy grave will be all your land_

_            Food for worms and none to mourn_

_            You'll curse the day you were ever born_

_            If you go to be a soldier_

_            If you go to be a soldier_

            and then from a group of women clustered around a fire, clapping their hands in time as they sang, 

            _We'll drink and dance and dice all day_

_            And on the boys we'll spend our pay_

_            And we will live however we may_

_Till we chase the Lady of Shadows_

_            Till we chase the Lady of Shadows_

            The music was loud, crude and vulgar compared to the more gentle and refined Elven melodies that Elrond was accustomed to—much like Men, the thought came unbidden—yet at the same time there was a sort of _life_ to it, a vitality that the more restrained Elvish songs he knew did not have.  It was alive.  And the tune, as crude as it was, lent strength to his step even as a slight frown of disapproval crossed his face.

            He knew enough about the armor of the Seanchan already to recognize that—Celebrian—had been a rider of one of the flying creatures; he turned left, toward the west, where they kept all their strange beasts.  In the distance he heard a loud, ill-tempered roaring from the beast pens, and shouting, slurring voices over the strains of music; none around him so much as started though.  Evidently it was normal.  He stopped a Seanchan female in the muddy, torn-up street, to inquire of her, "Where is the Elvish rider of—of—of your flying creatures?"

            She looked back at him, dark brows drawing together over dark eyes; then her face cleared and she waved one hand.  "West," she said, speaking loudly, slowly and clearly—a blessing, for her accent was so slurred that he could barely understand her.  "You want Briande, Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_.  She is in the biggest tent—she shares it with her backrider, Keille."

            He followed her gesture, moving like a restless, unseen ghost through the dark and strange byways of the Seanchan camp—the byways that until recently had been the familiar green fields of his home.  Several times he stumbled, and barely caught himself—and how could he stumble or lose his footing on this, his home ground?  The thought brought pain, but he would not allow himself to think of it; he had other things to concern himself with.  In time he saw it; a large tent glowing with yellow light.  Loud voices could be heard coming from inside.  He went to the entrance, pushed aside the tent flap, and hovered anxiously on the threshold, unsure about whether or not to enter.  As he looked inside, his eyes picked out Celebrian.

            His gaze went to her at once, locking onto her like a magnet; she was not wearing the strange insectile helmet, and her heavy plate armor had been replaced with a lighter set of leathers.  At first he could do nothing more than stare at her, drinking in desperately every detail of his beautiful, loved wife, the wife whose absence had ached like an amputated limb for the past five hundred years.  Five hundred years that had weighed on him like eternity.  She had not changed, he mused dimly, filling his eyes with her.  Her hair had been cut, and that was all.  Other than that, she was almost exactly as he remembered her, as he had seen her at the docks of the Grey Havens on the last, lorn day of their parting.  Except then—then—she had been pale, he recalled dimly, pale and worn and unhappy; the ordeal she had endured in the orc-lairs had hung over her almost visibly like a shadow.  She had barely been able to summon up a smile for him, he remembered, and seeing her like that—so sad and shadowed—had hurt him even more than her absence.

            Now—

            "What am I going to do with you, I ask?"  Her voice was cold, quiet, yet sharp enough to make him flinch before he realized that it was not directed at him.  Two young women stood before her, in the same leather armor she wore although less ornate, in rigidly stiff attitudes.   They were trying to look humble, it seemed to him, and without much success, though his wife was clearly angry at them.  He had forgotten how beautiful she was when she was angry.  

She paused, as if waiting for an explanation.  None was forthcoming; the two women were silent.  After a moment, she spoke again, her voice, if anything, colder than before.  "This is the _fifth time_ you've been sent before me this year.  The _fifth time your activities have landed you in trouble deep enough to be sent to the Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ of the Expeditionary Force.  Have you still nothing to say for yourself, Lana, Sheilene?"_

The two of them glanced briefly at each other. "No, ma'am!" the dark-haired one answered.  

Celebrian paused again, watching them.  "This attitude of yours is going to get you into real trouble one of these days, Lana.  I don't blame you so much, Sheilene, although don't think I hold you completely innocent.  But _you, Lana—"_

            "Yes, Supreme _Der'Morat!"  the shorter, dark-haired woman replied smartly.  Celebrian glowered down at her._

            "What did you think you were doing back there?" his wife demanded, chilling even further.  "_Crash-diving_ the High Lady Suroth's _tent?_"

            "Well, Supreme _Der'Morat, it seemed like a good idea at the time," Lana said respectfully._

            "Seemed like a good idea at the time.  You crash-dived the High Lady's tent because it 'seemed like a good idea at the time,'" she repeated slowly, as if she had never heard such stupidity.  She waited another moment, then raised an eyebrow.  "If your judgement is so poor, then perhaps this explains your past misdemeanors.  Shall I repeat them?"

No answer was forthcoming.  Celebrian waited for none.  "Suspended from flight twice this year already.  By me _personally," she continued icily, "for a pattern of _suicidally insane_ __crash-dives over __seven message-towers and one _son_ of a __Blooded High Lord."  She did not shout, but her words rang in the room nevertheless.  The taller blonde one shot a look sideways at the shorter dark-haired one._

            "Limuk son of Etuai?" the other woman hissed.

            "I beg your pardon?" 

            "Nothing, Supreme _Der'Morat!"_

            Celebrian glared at them.  "Keep it that way.  Now let me tell you," she continued, lowering her voice to just above a whisper.  "If you wish to toy with death, that's your own look-out.  As far as I'm concerned, you can do whatever you want.  Toss _reja-blades at each other.  Go fishing with Sen T'jore trap-worms.  Girls who want to be __raken-riders are ten for a silver on the streets of Seandar.  Frankly, you're expendable.  __But your raken ISN'T!" _

            "Sorry, ma'am!"

            "Sorry.  Is that all you have to say for yourself?" she demanded.  "That you are sorry?  As _raken-riders, your concern for the welfare of your beast __must always come first!  If you think that you will __ever have a chance to make _der'morat_ without mastering that simple lesson—"_

            She stopped, for in that moment she had turned, circling the two young humans, and come face to face with the door.  With the entrance to her tent.  And with Elrond.

            Celebrian's face froze; she stared at him, her blue eyes wide, her expression fixed.  Elrond could not name the look he saw on her face, but just seeing her again was almost enough to break his heart.  He took a faltering step toward her, and managed, "Celebrian—"

            And now, he saw, with growing confusion and unease, Celebrian stepped _back, not toward him, matching him pace for pace; her brows contracted and her expression twisted into a look of—it could not be dismay, surely not, but--  He forced out again, past a blockage of some sort in his throat, "Celebrian, I—"_

            Now the two human girls, who had been watching the scene, began to giggle.  At that sound, Celebrian's brows lowered over her eyes in an expression of displeasure and she came toward him, at last, but with a look of such thunderous anger on her face that it pierced him to the heart.  He had never seen her look like that at him before, ever.  She advanced on him, each step taken with military precision, and hissed in a low, hard undertone, "_Leave.  Now._"

            _Leave.  It took a moment for the words to sink in.   She was telling him to--  After all this time—finally, after five hundred years of separation—after five hundred years that had been an eternity to him, she--  He managed again only, "Celebrian, please, I have—"  Vaguely he was aware of the two human girls giggling even harder behind her._

            _"Briande!_" she snarled at him.

"I—what do you—"  He could not think; he was lost in confusion.  She was not smiling at him, she did not seem pleased to see him—the wife that he had loved, that he had remained faithful to throughout the centuries, in default of other ties and loves—A sick, cold feeling clutched his heart.  "Celebrian, what do you mean when you—"

She actually flinched, he saw, and advanced so close to him that he backed up himself before her relentless onslaught.  In the background, her girls were giggling even harder; she heard it, and her own expression stiffened.  "My name is Briande Duchen of the Blood of Paendrag," she hissed at him under her breath.  "It was granted to me by the Empress of the Nine Moons herself, on the day she manumitted me from _da'covale_ status, and it was a great honor.  _Every time you call me Celebrian,_ you take from me what is rightfully mine and I lose _sei'taer _in the eyes of my women!  Leave _at once!"_

She was actually touching him now, gripping him by his upper arm and shoving him physically back out of the tent; she had heaved him through the door and into the dark night outside hard enough to make him stumble.  He stared at her, a dark figure silhouetted by the glowing yellow light from the inside, her features obscured and unrecognizable. He was aware of a distant, dull ache in his heart, a feeling of cold misery that was spreading throughout his soul.  His wife was before him—they were together again—and yet somehow, they were apart.

"Cele—Briande," he fumbled for words at last.  "Please."

He could not say anything more, did not even know what else he might say to her.   He could only manage that single plea as he looked up at this stranger who wore his wife's face.  She gave a tiny sigh, and relented.  Somewhat.

"I cannot speak with you tonight at anywhere near the length that is necessary," she said, her voice softening almost imperceptibly.  "I must prepare for the operation that will get underway tomorrow.  Tomorrow, I will talk with you.  There are things we must discuss."

"Ce—Briande, I love you," he said in an almost inaudible whisper.

She did not reply.  Instead she turned from him and stepped back inside the tent, allowing the drape to fall closed and cutting him off from her.  From inside he heard the giggling of the two human women; then Celebrian's shout, "_What are you laughing about?!!" and then sudden, sharp silence._

Moving leadenly, Elrond turned and stepped back into the night.

She was called Undomiel, the Evenstar, and indeed, night was the time that suited her best; as she wandered through the gardens, caressing a bloom here, a shrub there, coaxing it to flourish to its best, the moon struck light of _mithril_ into her black hair, and turned her flawless skin to purest alabaster, her gray eyes silver with shadow and starlight.  Under the light of the moon, she was indeed as beautiful as her ancestress, Luthien Tinuviel, who had loved a mortal man, Beren, and so had fallen into the Doom of Men.

That Doom will also be mine.

A fountain of Luthien rested in the gardens, depicting the moment when she had first been surprised by Beren; Arwen stopped now in front of that cool marble image, looking up at it and listening to the play of water in the basin.  Her father had gifted her with it three hundred years ago, when she first planned the gardens; it had been carved in her likeness, for she was Undomiel, and all said that she was as beautiful as her forebear had been.  Now, as she gazed up at that cool white marble, silvered by the moonlight, her thoughts turned back to the Doom that she would share with her ancestress.

The Doom of Men.

The thought was never far away, always lurking at the edges of her mind, the shadowed places where she tried not to look.  She did not regret the decision that had led to that eventuality; she had chosen freely, had chosen to join with Aragorn, with his fire, his strength, his courage.  Sometimes, however, a little, she regretted the doom.  

She knew her father had grown somewhat cool toward Aragorn, since the day Aragorn had broached the subject with him; knew that he blamed both Aragorn and himself for what he saw as her loss.  She had tried to heal that distance, for it hurt her, but she could not undo the distance unless she undid the choice, and that she would not do.  And so her father drew apart, not just from Aragorn, but also from her as well.  Not that he was angered toward her; Arwen had never known her father's anger, and never expected to.  It was just that—every word they passed, every embrace they gave, now carried with it the knowledge that she was doomed, and he was not.

It saddened her, sometimes.  But she had Aragorn, and that was enough.

Her father and her betrothed both had been wrapped in council all day.  She had heard, and heard distantly, that there had been some deed done, some foolish act taken on the part of the Seanchan, but did not know what that might be; Elladan and Elrohir, who had attended, had not had the time to speak with her at length since emerging.  So she waited here, in the gardens, for one or the other of them to come to her; waited and tended the plants that bloomed around her, that had been shaped and trained and pruned to keep them beautiful.

Footsteps on the paved path, out of sight around a curved row of hedges, jerked her from her reverie; she looked up hopefully to see if Aragorn or her father came to her, but then went still as she heard the approaching one's song, sung in the slurring Seanchan fashion:

"Oh, you'll feed on beans and rotten hay

And a horse's hoof come your naming day

You'll sweat and bleed and never grow old

And your only gold will be dreams of gold

Your only gold will be dreams of gold

If you go to be a soldier

If you go to be a soldier…."

She froze at the sound of that voice.  She _could not move, or even call out, but remained still and startled in the shadow of Luthien's fountain; her voice stilled within her in surprise, and she could only stare, wide-eyed, as the Seanchan soldier came jauntily, merrily round the hedge._

It was a short female; she was swinging that strange insect helmet in one hand, her short brownish hair riffling in the night breeze, and she was clad in close-fitting leather armor.  She was singing loudly, without thought for any that might hear, and when she caught sight of Arwen, standing still as the statue behind her, her voice cut off with a startled choke.

"Bloody Light!" she managed in a strangled fashion, missed a step, tripped over her own feet, and fell flat on the stone walkway.  "Bloody flaming Light!   Ow!!"

Now Arwen moved, going forward perhaps half a dozen steps in startlement before recollecting herself and coming to a stop.  "Are—are you harmed?" she faltered, uncertain how to approach this Seanchan; these people were completely outside of anything she had ever experienced.

The Seanchan soldier, however, had rolled and came back to her feet again with ease.  "No, I'm fine, you just startled me, is all," she said, grinning ruefully.  "I thought I was alone on this path.  You're an Other, aren't you?" the Seanchan asked, looking at her closely.  "You're the daughter of the Other who owns this house, right?"

"An—an Other?" Arwen asked, confused.  "I do not understand—I am an Elfmaiden, if that is what you mean—I am Arwen, Arwen Undomiel, that is the Evenstar--"

"Yeah, Other, Elfmaiden, same thing," the Seanchan said cheerfully.  "That's a pretty name, Arwen," she continued.  "I'm Keille Sar, _morat'raken_ of the Ever Victorious Army—pleased to meet you," she said, holding out her hand matter-of-factly.  Arwen stared at it for a long moment, somewhat disconcerted, then took it lightly; Keille shook with her, then released her.

"You know of Elves?" Arwen asked now, surprised.

"Others?  Yeah, we have Others in Seanchan too—in fact, our Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken is an Other, Briande.  As a matter of fact, I was looking for her—High Lady Suroth has given the go-ahead for us to move against Isengard tomorrow and I thought I should tell her, if she hasn't already heard.  Has she come this way?  Have you seen her?" _

"No, I—I have not," Arwen responded slowly.

The Seanchan—Keille—hissed through her teeth in irritation.  "Ah goat-dung," she said dismally.  "That means she could be anywhere.  Huh.  Well, I better go see if I can find her somewhere else.  Thanks for your help."  So saying, she turned, shifted her helmet to the other hand, and started back the way she had come.  

Arwen hovered, irresolute and torn, as the Seanchan continued toward the bend of the hedge.  She was curious about these Seanchan—who _were these people who came and settled around Rivendell, settled as if they meant to stay, with their strange beasts and armor—and so many women among them?  She was frightened too—her father, brothers, and betrothed had all asked her to stay away from them--but __this Seanchan did not seem threatening, and….and if she went—when would she get another chance?_

"Wait!" she called out suddenly, as Keille reached the turn of the path.

Keille paused and looked back over her shoulder.  "Yes?" she asked obligingly.

Now that she had this Seanchan's attention, Arwen suddenly found herself uncertain how to proceed; she swallowed, then took a step closer, half surprised at her own daring.  "Stay, if you wish," she said hesitantly.  "I—I would speak with you about Seanchan, if you would be so kind as to oblige me.  I have not had—much opportunity to talk with your people, since they came, and I have felt the lack."  

She fell silent then, looking at Keille hopefully.  Keille paused, thinking, then glanced up at the moon's position in the sky.  "We-elll," she said doubtfully, drawing out the word, "I really should be trying to find Briande, _but_—somebody else can tell her, I guess, if she doesn't already know, and—well, I would like a chance to talk with one of you about this Middle-Earth; Briande won't say much about it."

"Is this Briande from Middle-Earth?" Arwen asked.

Keille nodded.  "Yeah, originally, but it was a long time ago.  Well—"  She glanced at the moon again, cut her eyes toward camp, then came to a decision.  "All right.  I've got time.  Come on, let's sit down." 

The two women sat on the wide rim of the fountain, as the water splashed in the pool and the shadows of the evening deepened around them, and talked for hours, about many things.  Keille started off by telling Arwen a little of the Foretelling by the Empress's _soe'feia_ Truthspeaker that had led to this expedition; she spoke of the Empress who ruled on the Crystal Throne—"a giant _ter'angreal_ that induces awe in all those who approach it," she said, and Arwen, who had no knowledge of what a _ter'angreal_ might be, nodded solemnly—she spoke of the impending Return to the Westlands, the lands on the other side of Seanchan from whence had come Luthair Paendrag Hawkwing, and how soon the Seanchan army was going to go back across the ocean to bring the name of Hawkwing back to Hawkwing's home.  This led naturally to talk of the army and how it was structured, and soon at Arwen's request Keille was telling Arwen of how she had come to join up.  

"I was born on the Street of Lamps in Imfaral, within sight of the Towers of Midnight, to a glass-blowing family," she explained.  "There were seven kids in the family and I was the last, and there wasn't enough money for us all….mostly because of my father.  He was a drunkard and what he didn't spend on wine he spent chasing after other women, then he would come home and smack us around—oh, my mother used to get so angry at him!  She would have left him in a heartbeat if she could have, but her family hadn't approved of the marriage, so she had nowhere to go.  So she had to stick it out.  Meanwhile us kids all put up with it and looked for ways to escape….my oldest brother went and lived with some friends on their farm in the countryside; one of my sisters lucked out and was taken for a _sul'dam_, and finally one day when I was seventeen I decided I had had enough and ran off to join the army.  The first year I thought it was the biggest mistake of my life!" she said, laughing.  "Oh, I hated it—I would have run away so many times if I had anywhere to go—but round about the beginning of the second year, about the time I started to really get good at working with the _rakens, is when I started to realize I was really enjoying what I was doing, and after that, the rest was easy.  Really funny how that happens," she said, smiling at the memory; then her voice grew quiet as she talked of the places she had been, the things she had seen and done, traveling wherever her path within the army took her; she spoke of putting down a revolt in Marelendar, on the southeast coast of Seanchan, to campaigning up north against the ever-encroaching Blight, to going on a famine-relief operation when drought hit the N'Kon province—"it's really beautiful down there, they've got __eha flowers as high as your head, and some of the buildings date back almost to the reign of Empress Sorao, all blue and crystal—" to training maneuvers in the depths of the Sen T'jore—"lousy, _lousy_ place to train; we were there during the wet season and it rains _all—the—time,_ you can't stay dry if your life depended on it, and everything starts to rust—"  She spoke of road-building through the Sa'las Plains—"nice, temperate weather and the men there are very attractive and always willing to do their best for a servant of the Crystal Throne," she added, grinning, and told of a man she had met there who had given her a necklace of blue-stone beads that she still had with her; then she reminisced about campaigning with High Lord Turak through the Serengada Dai, which was apparently very hot and full of sand in parts—"__good sand, though, highest quality, trust a glass-blower's daughter to know," while in other parts it was flat and grassy with widely spaced trees—"that's where they train the __s'redit, you know."  Arwen did not know what a __s'redit might be, but she nodded anyway, mesmerized and unwilling to do anything that might stop Keille from talking.  That had been the campaign, Keille related, where she had flown seventy-two hours straight through hostile territory to deliver a call for reinforcements to Ground Captain Hisva, a feat for which she had been presented to the Empress at the victory celebration.  "It had been the campaign against the Empress's first husband, you know—he had broken away from her and had scraped himself together an army, trying to put his sister on the Crystal Throne—we crushed him though, of course.  I felt bad for the Empress," she said, looking openly at Arwen, " although that probably sounds silly; from what I hear she really did love him when they first married.  I guess you just never can tell when it comes to men."  Finally she grew quiet and thoughtful._

"Yeah," she said at last, her voice soft.  "I've been all around Seanchan, I guess, and seen just about everything there is to see.  Not bad for a city girl from the Street of Lamps in Imfaral.  And now I'm here," she said, smiling slightly.  "Halfway across the world, in this Middle-Earth, and when we finish up here, then I'm going back the other way.  Back to Paendrag's home.  I guess when I get too old and I have to retire, I'll have pretty much seen the entire world.  Isn't that something?" she mused, and fell silent for a while, lost in thought.

Arwen was silent as well.  She understood very little of what Keille had been saying; the places, the things were so strange and unfamiliar to her that it strained the limits of her comprehension to grasp them.  Yet still, she was enthralled by Keille's remembrances.  And what she had said—about the Empress, and about her family—Arwen's brows drew slightly together, troubled.

She had no time to think of why, though, because Keille looked back at her.  "How about you?" she asked brightly.

"What?" Arwen responded, startled out of her reverie.

"There, I've told you about Seanchan and my entire life-history, why don't you tell me about Middle-Earth?  What have you done?"

 And Arwen composed her thoughts and began to speak, slowly at first, of the things she knew and had seen.

"The Dark One's Eyes."

Ground Captain Maekel Etari smiled as he gestured toward the two dice that lay, single pips upward, beneath the raised leather cup in Boromir's hand.

"What does that mean?" Boromir asked, staring down at the two dice in the flickering firelight.

The two men were crouched on the ground outside Maekel Etari's tent, before his fire.  Although entitled to a pavilion, like Lady Suroth, by virtue of his rank within the army, Maekel Etari was something of the consummate soldier, and always insisted on traveling and living as simply as his men.  

Maekel grinned, showing teeth white in a dark-complexioned face.  "Depends what game you're playing.  Like so many other things in life, the worth of this throw depends on the context in which it's set.  Some games, it's a winning throw; others, a losing one."  He looked up with one dark eye at the man of Gondor before him.  "Given that we're playing sixes, in this case it's a losing one.  For you."

Boromir scowled but pushed forward a substantial pile of glittering gold.

"Ahh, that's more like it."  Maekel raked it in with a sigh of satisfaction.  "Sure you wouldn't care to try and wager that precious horn of yours?  It'd fetch a fair amount as an antique…"

"The Horn of Gondor," Boromir began in a tone of barely concealed outrage, "belongs to the Line of Gondor and is not to be _frivolously—"_

"Meant no offense," Maekel said, leaning back and spreading his hands.  "Is it some kind of _ter'angreal?_"

Boromir frowned now.  "I know not this word _ter'angreal_," he said in confusion.  "It is an artifact of great power and strength.  It is said that when it is winded within the borders of Gondor, then it will never go unanswered."

"Sounds like the Horn of Valere.  Do all the Heroes of the Horn ride to save you?"

"What?"

"Never mind."  Maekel shook his head.  "Would you like some more wine?" 

"If you please."  

The Ground Captain poured some more wine from a leather skin into the cracked clay mug he had dug out of his battered wooden foot-locker, a veteran of many campaigns.  Boromir raised it and took a gulp.

"Stronger than I'm used to," he said, opening his eyes.

"It's from the Sa'las Plains.  They make it strong there."  Maekel took a swig right from the skin.  "Cough up," he said now, shoving some more gold forward.

Boromir took a sour look at the small pile of gold that belonged to him, and then sighed and shoved half of it forward as well.

"Pairs this time?" Maekel asked.

Boromir shrugged.  "What you will."

"Pairs then."  He began to shake the dice.  "You know, if you want my opinion, you're the only one that showed any guts at that council of the Others.  Why do you think I offered to dice with you this evening?"

The other man looked at Maekel.  "You really think so?"

"Sure."  The Seanchan shrugged, looking Boromir straight on.  "That Other Elrond—"

"ElrondHalf-Elven_.  Elrond _Peredhil._"_

Maekel shrugged.  "Elrond.  Spouted a lot of nonsense about how the ring belonged to the Enemy or some such, and how it was unfit for us to hold, and so on, and I didn't hear one decent reason as to _why we shouldn't use it.  Now __Der'Sul'dam Katrell, all right, she also said it should be destroyed, but at least she offered a __reason—one that I completely agree with, by the way, made with tainted __saidin, which frankly gives me the chills.  Not one of the Others offered any sort of reason, or even said anything that seemed to make much sense.  Except for you.  And while, like I said, I support the __Der'Sul'dam, I applaud your reason and rationality."_

Boromir sighed now, taking another sip from the cup.  "If only you were not the only one that feels in that fashion," he said with a sardonic tone.  As Maekel lowered the dice cup, looking at him with interest, Boromir now spoke.  Perhaps it was the wine, but he found himself unburdening his soul to this swarthy Seanchan.  "I am of Gondor.  Gondor stands on the edge of Mordor; as such we are closest to the Shadow.  I—I have been fighting the Shadow all my life.  All my life, and I cannot—I do not—"  He broke off.  After a moment, he took a breath and went on again.  "Elrond has all but told me that I cannot succeed at this task, that my efforts are for less than _nothing._  And then—Aragorn—he is named Estel, did you know?  That is 'Hope' in Elvish.  He is the one who will defend Middle-Earth.  He will defeat the Shadow, and join again the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor.  He is Isildur's Heir.  He is the one who has—who has the right to the Ring.  And he won't _use_ it!"  Boromir's voice cracked with frustration.  "He—He—_He_ is the one who will save us all—who _can_ save us all, and he _will not.  And I—"  He broke off again and looked away, struggling to control himself.  He heard Maekel grunt._

"Huh."  Rattle of dice being shaken and thrown.  "Lucky fives.  Tough throw to beat.  Hey," he said now, touching Boromir on the arm to bring his attention back.  "Sounds like everyone thinks this Aragorn is _ta'veren or some such.  Is he really that important?"_

Boromir nodded, looking down.  "I know not the word _ta'veren, but he is the one who is destined to defeat the Shadow.  Everyone thinks so, even if they don't say it; __Peredhil, Mithrandir…."  He sighed._

"Huh."  Maekel tossed him the dice cup.  Slowly, Boromir gathered up the dice from where they had spilled in the dirt and began half-heartedly rattling them.  "Lotta pigswill, if you ask me."

"What?"  Boromir asked, staring at him; the cup lowered, forgotten.

"Lotta pigswill.  Look here," he said to Boromir, shrugging.  "I've been all around Seanchan, from Shon Kifar, to the Sa'las Plains, to Marelendar, to Alqam, to—Well, all around.  I've seen action in a lot of different places.  And I will tell you now," he said, looking Boromir straight on.  "No single man or woman is _ever_ that important to the success of a battle or a war.  Our armies are going to roll over Mordor, whether or not this Aragorn is even alive.  He's not relevant.  What's relevant is numbers, types of forces, and how they are deployed.  One good strategist is worth a thousand soldiers, yes, but that only goes for strategists in general, not _an individual strategist in particular.  The only difference is when it comes to Tarmon Gai'don and the Dragon Reborn, and that's a special case, and even then I'm not convinced that he's necessary."_

Boromir considered, almost asked, then dismissed it.  He shook his head wearily instead.  "No," he said dully.  "You're wrong.  Numbers cannot win this war.  I know it.  I have fought Mordor's forces all my life, and I have seen—"

He broke off, for Maekel Etari was smiling, a slow, toothy, utterly confident smile.  "Have you ever seen _Seanchan_ fighting before?" he asked, grinning.

"Well, no," Boromir was forced to admit.

"Maybe you want to wait until you've seen us fight before you toss your oars.  All right?" he asked.  As Boromir stared at him, Maekel laughed a little.  "Your Mordor sounds no worse or better than our Blight.  It's to the north, full of Shadowspawn and other twisted creatures—Trollocs, Myrddraal, Darkhounds, and other hideous monstrosities—a terrible, hard land to fight in.  Yet we've fought in it. And more or less tamed it, or at least beaten it back.  And this Sauron sounds nowhere near as bad as the Dark One, from what I make out.  Never fear.  When Hawkwing's seed first arrived on Seanchan, over a thousand years ago, the whole _land was filled with the Armies of the Night.  Did that dismay us?  No!  We fought and conquered and subdued the whole continent.  We did it once; we can do it again."_

Boromir looked at Maekel closely.  "You believe that," he said slowly.  "You honestly believe that…."

"Of course I do.  We should be going out tomorrow; High Lady Suroth has received intelligence from the Third Raken Flight about movement to the south—Isengard, I think it's called.  You can come with, if you want."

"Maybe I will."  He frowned, pondering.

"Say, anyway, what's a bright young man like you doing wasting his time with all these Others?"

Boromir frowned.  "How do you mean?"

"No offense, but this doesn't seem like the kind of land here, this Middle-Earth, where—let's say—where straight thinking is much of an asset, always.  Not like in Seanchan.  I blame the Others, myself; some of them can be wise, like _Der'Morat'Raken_ Briande, but on the whole it seems like Others simply can't think straight in the same way that men and women can.  Seanchan is a whole different story."  He paused and eyed Boromir.  "We can always use straight thinkers, if you're willing to learn our ways.  I can put you in charge of a company, or maybe even take a whole company from this Gondor of yours—you say they've got fighting men; if you have what it takes, you can work your way up and maybe be a Captain of the Ground Forces by the time we've whipped this land into shape and gone back for the _Hailene._"

Boromir did not know how to answer.  He stared at Maekel blankly, until the Seanchan clicked his tongue.  

"You gonna throw sometime this dynasty?"

"Oh—I—your forgiveness…."  Hastily, blindly, Boromir rattled the cup and threw.  When he lifted it from the ground, two pips stared back at him—the Dark One's Eyes. Scowling again, he started to push his gold forward.  Only to be stopped by Maekel's hand.

"At _pairs_, that's the _highest throw.  You win."_

And as Boromir stared at Maekel, the swarthy Seanchan Captain grinned.

_Again she fled, but swift he came._

_Tinuviel!  Tinuviel!_

_He called her by her Elvish name;_

_And there she halted, listening._

_One moment stood she; and a spell_

_His voice laid on her: Beren came,_

_And doom fell on Tinuviel_

_That in his arms lay glistening._

_As Beren looked into her eyes_

_Within the shadows of her hair,_

_The trembling starlight of the skies_

_He saw there mirrored shimmering_

_Tinuviel the elven-fair,_

_Immortal maiden elven-wise,_

_About him cast her shadowy hair_

And arms like silver glimmering… 

Arwen's voice, soft and reverent, died away into the shadows of the night.  She had not the heart to recite the last verse, not now, on such a quiet, tranquil night; but she had told enough of the tale of Tinuviel that Keille knew the ending, even if she could not sing it.  She had spoken long, and the moon had crept high into the heavens as she told of the love of Luthien and Beren, in the First Age of the world—"that is an image of her," she had said, nodding to the fountain behind the two women, "at the moment when she was first surprised by Beren"; Keille had turned and had admired the smooth, delicately carved marble image, both of Arwen and her ancestor.  Arwen had refrained out of modesty from telling Keille that there were those who thought she was as beautiful as Luthien had been.  The Elfmaiden spoke instead of how together Luthien and her love had faced the Great Enemy Morgoth, of whom Sauron was but a pale shadow, in the days of the First Age, and retrieved one of the Silmarils from his crown; as she told of Beren's death, and how Luthien, the first of the Elven maidens to do so, had chosen to follow him into death rather than live out eternity alone, how they had been joyously reunited, so the tales said, beyond the Sundering Sea.  She spoke of the union of Idril and Tuor, and how they had been united in the days of the war against Morgoth; how they had given birth to Earendil the Mariner, who had taken to wife Elwing, the granddaughter of Luthien, and had used her Silmaril to obtain aid from beyond the Shadows, and had been given a ship of stars to pilot in the night sky—

A ship then new they built for him 

_Of mithril and of elven-glass_

_With shining prow: no shaven oar_

_Nor sail she bore on silver mast:_

_The Silmaril as lantern-light_

_And banner bright with living flame_

_To gleam thereon by Elbereth_

_Herself was set, who thither came_

_And wings immortal made for him _

_And laid on him undying doom,_

_To sail the shoreless skies and come _

Behind the Sun and light of Moon 

She had sung those verses softly for Keille, then had spoken of Earendil's and Elwing's sons, Elros and her father Elrond, and the choice that had been set before them, and before her.  "There have been two unions of Elven-maidens and the sons of Men," she had said then, "and there will be one more before my people return across the sea.  That of myself and Aragorn, the last chieftain of the Dunedain, Estel and Elessar.  For I will take Luthien's choice, and leave my people, and cleave unto him.  And by this union, the two lines of the Half-elven shall be united."  And then she had sung the song of Tinuviel, leaving the echoes to linger on the air as her voice died to stillness.

The two women sat in silence for a time, the night breathing around them; then Keille stirred as one waking from a bright dream, and said quietly, "That was very beautiful."

Arwen said nothing, but cast her eyes down.

Keille was silent for a moment more, then asked ingenuously, "So what did _you_ do?"

Now Arwen was startled, and she looked back at Keille.  "What?"

"What did _you do?" Keille asked, looking at her with honest interest._

"I don't understand—"

"Well," Keille went on, her voice somehow naïve and innocent, "I asked you to tell me about yourself, and I got to hear all about your ancestry—and it was a wonderful tale, to be sure, full of heroism and bravery," she said honestly, "but I didn't get to hear what _you did.  Come on!  You must have done something!" she said eagerly.  "I want to hear about it!  Come on!" she pleaded, looking at Arwen earnestly._

Arwen stared at the short human, sitting eagerly before her, almost stunned.  She had just recited the bold tale of her heritage, the mighty deeds of her forerunners, who had shaped Middle-Earth with their daring and courage, and this short daughter of Men brushed it all aside as if these deeds were unimportant and only wanted to know what _she had done—what _she—__

"What did you do?" the human asked again with interest.

            "I—I—"  Arwen suddenly, abruptly came to the realization that not only was the woman not interested in her ancestry, but also she had nothing to tell the woman.  Compared to the human's litany of bold deeds performed by her—deeds related without any trace of braggadocio, furthermore, but as simple fact, as if everyone had or should have had such experiences—Arwen was almost beyond stunned to realize that she had nothing to offer, nothing that could measure up to the tales of distance flights, of wide travels, of fighting and courage and valor that this woman had performed—that in her perhaps twenty-five years of life, this woman had done more and seen more than Arwen had in her three thousand.

            The woman was looking at her now with open interest, waiting for her to respond; Arwen scrambled uselessly through her handful of travels—how small and insignificant they suddenly seemed to her, beside the continent-spanning, ocean-spanning travels of this human—and seized at last upon an answer.  "Lorien," she said slowly.  "I have seen Lothlorien."

"Now that sounds like something; let's hear about it,"  Keille said, sitting forward with interest.  Emboldened by Keille's attention, Arwen continued. 

"Lothlorien is the Golden Wood—that is the home of Celeborn and Galadriel, who is the most powerful of the Elves remaining within Middle-Earth.  It is—was—the home of my mother," she added almost shyly, "and it was there—in the shadows of Lothlorien—where my mother and father met.  It was in the shadows of Lothlorien as well," she went on more quietly, "where I plighted my troth to Aragorn, vowing to forsake my immortality and cleave only unto him."

She might have gone on from there, but Keille spoke up.  "See, that's what I don't understand."

"What?" Taken aback again, Arwen looked at her.

"That's what I don't understand," Keille repeated, shrugging.  "All right, you and this man—this—Aragorn—love each other.  All well and good.  But why give up your immortality for him?  _I wouldn't." she said candidly.  "It's too permanent.  Once you've done it, you can't go back.  So why?  Why do it to begin with?"  
            Arwen marshaled her thoughts, then responded with the same words she had told her father, and her betrothed, when they had inquired the same thing.  "Because I love him," she said quietly.  "And I had rather live one lifetime with him than all the Ages of the Earth without him."_

Keille looked at her dubiously.  "Yeah, you say that _now," she said, raising one eyebrow curiously.  "But, I mean, are you sure you're going to feel that way when you're staring down the barrel of permanent oblivion?  If you love him, be with him, but why marry?  Why sacrifice your immortality in that fashion?"  At Arwen's stunned look, Keille shrugged.  "Look, I know how you feel—a little bit anyway—I am a _raken_ rider," she said, leaning forward earnestly.  "A __raken-rider can't marry—marriage and child-rearing mean an end to your career.  Now, I have a casual sweetheart in among the pikemen.  Do I marry him?  _No!_  Of course not, don't be silly.  He and I visit whenever we get the chance; he brings me gifts, I bring him gifts, we look each other up at the end of battles—it's a good relationship.  Neither one of us asks any more than the other is willing to give; both sacrifices on each side are equal.  No way I would __ever give up the skies for him; the skies are worth too much to me, and if he tried to force the choice, I would get rid of him in an _instant_.  He knows it; he is satisfied with things as they are, and it works.  Why not do it that way?" she asked, shrugging.  "Why not simply visit him until your time in this world ends, then leave?  It's a good long run, and you've still got eternity ahead of you to find another man."_

Arwen stared at her, unsure how—or even whether—to respond; she stared at the _raken_-rider as if she had said something completely unintelligible—which, of course, she had.  Keille continued to frown, not appearing to notice Arwen's confusion.

"Or better yet, why not take him with you?" Keille asked now, suddenly struck by the thought.  "I'm sure if you tried hard enough you could find a way.  Take him with you to wherever you're going when you leave this world.  That way, if this man is really so important to you that you're willing to spend eternity with him, you get to; he gets to live forever, everybody wins.  Why not do that?"

As the short _raken-rider paused, waiting for her reply, Arwen struggled to put her thoughts in order.  "I—he cannot," she responded at last, getting her feet under her.  "He is the—the last of the Dunedain, the heir to Gondor and Arnor," she continued with more confidence.  "Father says that Aragorn is the one—that he must reunite the two kingdoms—"_

Keille's frown silenced her; the short daughter of Men knitted her brows, thinking.  "Mmmm—I don't know," she said doubtfully.  "It just doesn't sound like a very fair trade to _me, is all I'm saying….I mean, so you're willing to give up your immortality for love of him, but he's not willing to give up his kingdom for love of you?  Sounds to me like you're the one making all the sacrifices.  Kind of reminds me of a couple of sweethearts I've had in the past, and let's just say they didn't turn out too well." _

"No—no, that's not what I—"  That was not how it happened, she wanted to protest, that was not how it was, but at that moment she could not.  Suddenly it seemed like Keille was speaking sense to her, and even though she knew that was not the case, somehow she could not recall what the case actually was.  

The Seanchan watched politely, brows creased slightly, as Arwen struggled with herself, to put her thoughts in order.  Neither her father, nor her brothers, nor even Aragorn had spoken to her in this fashion before about her choice.  Finally she fell back on the one thing she knew for sure.  "I love him," she asserted, regaining some measure of calm.  "Aragorn is a good man.  He is worth any sacrifice that I might choose to make for him—"

Far from seeming to accept this, Keille only frowned more intensely, and Arwen was struck silent by that deeply dubious expression.  After a moment, the human said again, disbelievingly, "Yeah, you say that _now….but I mean, are you still gonna think that five or ten years from now, when he's fallen into the bottle, chases every sweet piece of skirt that crosses his path, and smacks you and the kids around?"_

Arwen stared at her, bewildered.  "_What?"_ she managed after a moment, too astounded to say anything more.  "What are you—You don't—you surely cannot think that _Aragorn—He would—would _never_--"_

Keille shrugged.  "Look," she said, sighing, "All I'm saying is that my mother thought the same thing in the first years of her marriage, until the drink set in.  The Empress thought the same of her first husband when they married, right up until the moment he broke from her and raised up an army in support of his sister.  Maybe—_maybe_—this Aragorn of yours is a good one.  But you can never really know until it's too late, can you?"

She paused then and studied Arwen's frozen expression.  "Ah, I'm sorry," she said then, sighing.  "One of these days I'm going to learn to stay out of other women's sweetheart problems.  I guess I'm a little cynical, is all; I've had my share of man troubles….I'll just say that each new serious sweetheart I took has been an improvement on the last, and the last one _only was rampantly unfaithful to me and stole everything of mine that he could get his hands on, so that should tell you the sort of luck I've had with men.  Maybe Aragorn's a good one.  He probably is.  I'm sure you know what you're doing and have thought it through, it's just—"  She paused, looking at Arwen's pale visage in the moonlight.  "You seem too intelligent to me to _really_ fall for this belief of true, perfect love at first sight, worth any sacrifice, so I have to wonder….what the real reason you want to give up your immortality is.  Maybe one that you haven't admitted to yourself," she said now gently, looking at Arwen closely, waiting for her to reply._

Arwen could not speak.  She felt as if her mind had been cracked with a hundred delicate fractures; the calm, cool way that this Seanchan had evaluated the beautiful love she and Aragorn shared left her stunned.  She groped for a fragment of a response, but could find nothing to say.  She could not argue because this woman was stating things that she _knew_, from personal experience; the tale of her mother's marriage, of the Seanchan Empress's marriage, of her own—_unmarried!—loves had shocked her like a slap in the face.  It had never occurred to Arwen that human marriages could be like that.  She had __seen no marriages like that, at least not among Elves; she felt as if Keille's words had opened a window for her on a world that she had not, until this moment, known existed._

_Of course Aragorn would never—would never behave like that._

But a deeper voice came back:  _Are you sure?_

The question that Keille raised still hung in the air—_Why are you _really_ willing to sacrifice your immortality?_  This was a question that even her _father had not asked—though he had questioned the wisdom of her choice, he had not questioned the motive behind it; he had simply accepted that she felt that Aragorn's love was worth—her—death.  Not so Keille.  Keille had utterly rejected the idea that it might be for love of Aragorn.  Arwen was in confusion; she felt as if the earth were breaking up underneath her, shifting where she stood.  __Why are you really_ willing--_  She looked up at the daughter of Men.  "I—I—"_

_"Arwen."_

The stern voice was her father's; she flinched as she heard it and turned toward him.

Elrond came down the stone path from the other direction, his brows contracted in a frown.  Even through her confusion, Arwen had time to think that her father looked distressed; he was too pale, and his eyes were shadowed with something that looked like hurt; his stride was uneven, though the ground was level and though Elves were renowned for their grace and fluidity of movement.  He was moving, in fact, almost as if he were in pain.  When he saw the Seanchan woman next to her, his frown deepened.  

Arwen rose swiftly from the rim of the fountain and stepped back at once, toward the white, still image of Luthien in the center of the pool.  The Seanchan woman rose too, looking not at all dismayed, and nodded cordially.  "Good evening, Elrond of the Others," she said pleasantly.

Her father did not acknowledge the other woman's courtesy.  "Are you in need of assistance?" he asked only.  "If you are lost, the Seanchan campgrounds are in that direction."   He indicated back the way he had come.

Arwen stared at her father almost openmouthed; she had never known him to be so short with guests before.  Proving herself able to take a hint, Keille nodded to him again.  

"Thank you for your assistance.  I guess I'd better be on my way."  She turned toward Arwen now.  "It was a pleasure meeting you, Arwen of the Others.  Perhaps we shall run into each other again sometime.  Wish me luck—we're going out on a raid tomorrow, and it might be dangerous."  She did not wait for Arwen's answer, which was good because no answer would have been forthcoming; instead she simply swung her Seanchan helmet up and placed it on her head, then strolled off as merrily as she had come, singing, 

"A handsome man and a tune so fine

And plenty of ale and plenty of wine

But the greatest delight that I call mine

Is to chase the Lady of Shadows

Is to chase the Lady of Shadows!"

So singing, she passed around a bend in the path and out of sight.

Scarcely had she gone than Elrond turned his attention to Arwen.  "Are you well, daughter?" he asked, and Arwen was almost afraid, for the Elven calm that had always characterized him in her mind was gone, to be replaced by an almost rough urgency that she had never seen from him before.

"Y-Yes," she managed nervously.  He seemed to see her upset and became calmer with an effort.

"That is well.  When I saw—when I saw the two of you together, I feared…."  He trailed off, leaving his thought uncompleted.  That was also unlike her father.  His eyes had grown distant and he looked back, perhaps unconsciously, to the Seanchan camp.  

            After a moment he came to himself again.  "Daughter, I must repeat my earlier request.  Stay away from these Seanchan," he commanded her.  "They are—they are unlike to us, and in many ways unwise.  I would not have you harmed by them.  Do you understand?" he asked, looking at her intently.  Arwen cast her eyes down and nodded in acquiescence.  She heard her father sigh in relief.

            "Is something wrong?" she asked, looking up at him again now.

            He hesitated for a moment, and she saw his pallor and the shadows about his eyes more clearly.  After a moment, he responded, "No….nothing is wrong; it has merely been a somewhat trying day.  I am well, my daughter," he said, giving her a small smile.

            "Was—was the council--?"

            He shook his head, forestalling her.  "Have no fear of the council, Arwen," he said reassuringly.  "The situation is in hand.  You should retire to your quarters; there will be less chance of meeting with the Seanchan there."

            "Of course," she murmured, and turned to go. 


	5. The Battle

Elrond had intended the council of the Ring to reconvene the next morning, but when he stepped out of his quarters into the light of the fresh dawn, he was suddenly surrounded by tumult and uproar.  Seanchan were hurrying in all directions, shouting incomprehensible orders at each other; their strange beasts were being hauled after them.  Women joined by the silver necklace and leash seemed to be everywhere, moving with quick, taut purpose.  He could see some of the delegates standing off to the side watching the upheaval, looking bewildered; Aragorn and Mithrandir were among them.

Carefully, he made his way through the uproar to the human and the Istari.  "What is happening?" he asked as he drew near.  "We were supposed to continue the council today…."

Aragorn shook his head, looking around him at the commotion.  "I do not know," he replied.  "The Seanchan were—"

"There you are, Elrond of the Others," Lady Suroth called out, spotting them from across the field.  She came through the commotion, untouched, to stand by them and observe the hurrying Seanchan with a look of deep satisfaction.  

Elrond turned on her angrily.  "What is the meaning of this, High Lady Suroth?" he demanded sharply.  "We were supposed to reconvene the Council of the Ring today—"

High Lady Suroth shrugged.  "We told you when we came in," she said coolly.   "The enemy to the southwest—Isengard?—has been raising an army—a large force of Shadowspawn.  How do you call Shadowspawn in these lands?  Orcs?  We received the final pieces of intelligence from our raken-riders last night; our confirmation that all our forces—our Fists of Heaven--were in position.  And so today we will go out and see that particular menace ended."  She broke off to shout instructions at one of the riders of the big three-eyed cats.

Elrond glanced at his companions, then turned back angrily to High Lady Suroth.  "You have said nothing to me of this assault—"

"I had no opportunity to before now," Suroth responded calmly.  "We finalized preparations, including positioning the Fists of Heaven, just last night, and I did not have enough time to track you down and explain the whole thing to you.  Now that you are here, however, I can inform you, we are beginning to move out.  We will strike Isengard within the hour."

Now Aragorn spoke.  "Impossible," he said at once.  "You talk nonsense—Isengard is many long days' march from here—"

Suroth faced him calmly.  "Not impossible for us.  We have a _ter'angreal_ that allows us to cross long distances in an instant. It will take us no more than a second to reach Isengard."

_Ter'angreal_.  There was that word again, and he still did not know what it meant.

Suroth surveyed them all, standing still and silent, looking with wide eyes at the commotion around them.  "I will be observing the battle from _to'raken-back.  You may join me if you wish; the __to'raken can hold up to six…."_

"Rest assured that we will," Elrond said stiffly, without even needing to glance at his companions.

"Very well.  I will inform the _der'morat'to'raken_ that you will be accompanying me."  So saying, Suroth turned and strode off without so much as a backward glance.

"Whew," Keille said mildly, stretching in her straps again behind Briande.  She shifted, adjusting her bow and arrows at her back.  Briande, in front of her, carried no weapons; it was too difficult to attempt to fight and to control the _raken at the same time._

The two women sat in a line of over two hundred _rakens, drawn up behind a company composed of fully half of the __sul'dam/damane pairs that they had brought with them from Seanchan.  In front of the damane were a solid block of pikemen—including Keille's sweetheart Ajan Idwalle; she had waved to him as she ran to climb up onto Iraumu's back behind Briande.  Off to either side were companies of horsemen and __morat'lopar—as a result of not knowing how long this engagement would last, it had been decided not to use the three-eyed, catlike _torm,_ as they would go berserk if they fought too long and then be uncontrollable.  And to either side of the horsemen waited __to'raken, each laden with ten or so somewhat small riders carrying bows, spears and swords—like the __raken-riders, the Fists of Heaven tended to be either women or small men, to allow more of them to fit on the _to'rakens_._

Iraumu shifted underneath her—he was impatient; Keille could feel the tension in his back and wing muscles.  Briande controlled him expertly.  Keille was impatient too, impatient to be released and to see some action.  "When are we going to start moving?" she complained to Briande.

"Soon," Briande said shortly; she had been tense, and Keille kept seeing her scanning the crowd as if looking for someone—someone Keille felt that she distinctly dreaded seeing.  To herself, Keille mused that it might have something to do with that Other Elrond who had called out to her yesterday; she did not speak such musings aloud, though, because she did not want to make Briande upset.

The two tall glass pillars of the Traveling _ter'angreal_ were being maneuvered into place as Briande and Keille watched, with five _sul'dam and their __damane per pillar.  Keille had seen this __ter'angreal used before and had some idea of what to expect; bored, she turned to scan the crowd again. _

"Oh, hey, Briande, look," she said, pointing across the field as a _to'raken_ caught her eye.  "High Lady Suroth will be accompanying us."

            Briande turned in her straps to look.  "Where?"

            "Over there, look, see?"  Keille pointed.  "Looks like she's got some others with her."

            She missed Briande's frown.  "Others or 'Others?'"

            "Both.  Look."  Briande turned, and watched Suroth mounting the _to'raken, behind the __der'morat.  Behind Suroth three other tall figures stood, one by one mounting the _to'raken_ after her.  One of them turned and looked, seeming to scan the crowd as if looking for something.  Keille frowned.  "Say, isn't that the Other Elrond?"_

            She sensed Briande tensing beside her.  "Is it?" she asked distantly.

            "Yeah, he's looking in this—"  She broke off as the Other caught sight of her and Briande.  He went still at once—Keille could see this from all the way across the mustering grounds—and stared at them.  Keille immediately glanced back at Briande, only to find that she had turned away at once.  She gave the distinct impression  that she was avoiding looking at the other Other.  

            The Other Elrond actually started toward them before seeing that Briande's face was averted, Keille saw; he seemed to come to an uncertain halt then, hesitating and irresolute.  Then Suroth said something sharply—Keille could catch the tone but not the words—and he jerked away, returning to the _to'raken's_ side and climbing into the saddle.  Even as he settled into the _to'raken_ saddle and secured the guard straps, he continued to look their way.

            Keille turned and looked at her friend speculatively, but Briande was avoiding her eyes.  With a shrug, she turned back to face forward, waiting.  Waiting was always the hardest part, she mused to herself; she didn't mind the action so much, though it could get dangerous, but waiting preyed on your mind.

            "I'll tell you," she said after a moment as a thought came to her—she had been reminded by the sight of that Other, Elrond.  "I spent some time talking to Elrond's daughter last night—Arwen, her name is."

            "Is it?" Briande asked with careful distance, keeping her eyes forward; though Keille was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to notice, the Other's body tensed under her leather armor, as if she beheld a lurking danger.

            "Yeah, she says it's Arwen-Something—she was given the Something part apparently because everyone thought she was so beautiful or something.  Don't get me wrong, she is," Keille added parenthetically, "but I don't know that she's really all that more attractive than, say, your average high class song-woman.  Anyway, _whoa, has she got problems!"_

            "Has she?" Briande asked, in that same expressionless tone.

            "Yeah," Keille rambled on, cheerfully oblivious.  "She thinks she's in love with this human man, and she's all upset—or maybe her father's upset, I wasn't too clear on that—because she's deciding to stay with him or something, so that means she's going to die.  Don't ask me how that works; I'm not too sure myself."  Keille shook her head.  In her mind, she saw Arwen's face, pale and radiant in the moonlight, as she spoke of the man she claimed she loved.  _Did_ love, at least in her own mind.  Of that, Keille was sure.

            That, however, got Briande's attention.  She turned sharply to look back at her backrider.  "_What did you say?" she demanded, her blue eyes suddenly as keen as daggers._

Somewhat surprised at this sudden show of interest, Keille nevertheless shrugged and repeated what she had said before.  "I told you.   This Arwen-Something, she thinks she's fallen in love with this mortal man, and now her father's upset because if she stays with him, somehow that means she's going to die."  As Briande's expression did not change, Keille shrugged.  "She claims she's fine with that, can you believe it?  She actually claims that she's _perfectly fine_ with _dying_, as long as she's with the man she thinks she loves."  She paused, then scolded humorously, "Honestly, Briande, when are you going to learn to listen to what I have to say?"

Briande made no reply; she was still staring at her backrider.  Her gaze had taken on an intensity that Keille found unnerving.  "Are you all right, Briande?" she asked, shifting uneasily.

After a long moment, her _der'morat_ spoke.  "What did you mean when you said 'the man she _thinks she loves?'" she asked at last. _

Now Keille grinned.  "Oh come on.  You know what I mean.  Every woman has at least one friend with a knack for bad romances," she said ruefully.

"You think this is a bad romance?  Why?"

"Oh come _on, Briande, weren't you listening?  The girl's obviously not thinking clearly.  She claims she _doesn't mind at all_ that she is now __certainly going to _die_ as long as she gets to stay with her man?" Keille asked somewhat derisively._

Briande looked pensive now.  As Keille watched her blue eyes turn inward, she pondered her friend's surprising interest in this case.  "Perhaps she means it when she says he is worth it," she said now, looking at Keille to gauge her reaction.  "Perhaps she honestly does think he is worth it."

Keille shrugged.  "I'm sure she _does mean it, and that's the problem," was her answer._

"You think she's wrong?"

"I _know she's wrong," Keille responded serenely, turning to look out over the assembled army as Iraumu shifted underneath her; she wondered with passing interest what was taking so long.  Around them other rakens were shifting, or stretching their wings; Keille raised her arms and stretched as well, in her straps. _

"Why?" Briande asked, looking at her intently.

The short human woman sighed at the question, and thought back to the moonlight, and Arwen's pale, still, rapt visage; the soft, calm voice in which she had spoken of her coming death.  Keille was very familiar with that voice, and that look, as she thought every woman must be; she had seen it before.  It had been on the face of her best friend Chulan, one memorable night shortly before she had left the army—she had come into Keille's tent, clearly struggling with a problem, and had proceeded to explain to Keille, although Keille had not asked, how it was all right that her sweetheart wanted her to leave the raken-riders and marry him, really, because he could provide for both of them so she didn't really _need_ to stay in, and anyway, you couldn't be a raken-rider _forever,_ could you?  At some point you had to move on with your life.  A month later she was gone.  Other faces with that look came up to her—her mother, explaining to Keille that her father was under a lot of pressure and they had to understand and forgive, right after he had taken the entire week's earnings out of the cashbox and spent it on girls and wine; her older sister, as she sat next to the latest in a string of loser boyfriends, explaining how he did not have his own healing practice _yet, but it was only a matter of time, and that when he did he would be able to afford to pay her back on the loan she had made him, but it was her friend Chulan's face that kept coming back to her.  Keille had been witness at her wedding, and Chulan had been glowingly happy, yet as she looked at her friend's radiant, shining expression, Keille had been haunted by the memory of that earlier night.  And Keille knew all too well the emotions on the other side of that strained, pale look; she had worn it herself on many occasions.  As she had apologized to her previous boyfriend for her suspicion; of course the woman he had been speaking with in the park had been his cousin, and her anger had been misplaced.  As she had accepted her third sweetheart's assertion that he had no idea what had happened to her grandmother's priceless firedrop necklace.  As she had agreed with her fifth sweetheart that of course he had nothing to do with dreamsmoke; it was not only harmful but dangerous, now that the Empress's Seekers for Truth were watching the trade—_that_ little dalliance had almost cost her her position as Fourth Talon Leader at Alqam Garrison, she remembered wryly.  _

It was the look of a woman who had so given control of herself to her man that she had nothing left of her own at all. 

 She remembered something Chulan had said to her, even before that awful night, after her sweetheart had asked her forgiveness for something he had done wrong—"I just can't say no to him," she had said in a soft, awed voice; she had spoken, Keille had thought, as if that thoroughly mediocre specimen of humanity were simply the most handsome and powerful and irresistible man on earth.  She remembered that, and thought, _That's what Arwen looked like.  Chulan.  She sighed now, shaking her head, and spoke of this commonality to Briande.  "She had that look.  __You know.  That--look." _

And she could see, by the change in Briande's face, by the way her eyes darkened and her expression tightened, that Briande _did know.  And furthermore, though Keille had no idea why, that she was deeply disturbed by it._

"Briande—is something wrong?"

Her friend's mouth tightened.  She hesitated, irresolute, then shook her head.  "Not now.  There's no time.  I'll tell you later, I promise."

Keille frowned and would have said more, but at that moment, her words were cut off; movement ran through the ranks as all eyes turned toward Maekel Etari.  Arwen was forgotten as the business at hand returned to the forefront of Keille's thoughts.  There was no room now in her mind for anything but the battle to come, and she hung in suspense, waiting for the command.

            Captain of the Ground Forces Etari shouted a sharp command.  "_Stand—ready!"  As one, the assembled forces fell silent and came to attention.  Keille reached behind her automatically to check on her bow and quiver, and she saw Briande shifting in her straps, taking a better grip on her reins.   The ten __sul'dam and their _damane_—five on either side of the glass pillars, now fifty paces apart—straightened, turning to face the High Lady, where she sat on __to'raken back.  Now Suroth rose in her stirrups, looking out over the _der'morat'to'raken's_ shoulders.  As she rose so, an expectant hush fell over the assembled forces; in the silence, Keille felt many gazes going to the High Lady._

            Suroth paused a moment, regarding this small fragment of the Ever Victorious Army; the expression flickering in her dark eyes was unreadable at this distance.  Then she smiled and called into the silence, "_Sul'dam_ and _damane!"_

            Those addressed straightened visibly, the _sul'dam_ in their lightning-forked dresses, the _damane_ in their drab dresses of dark gray.

            "Open the Gateway!" she called, her voice resounding.

            At once, the ten _sul'dam/__damane pairs, five on either side, turned to face the pillars.  Each _sul'dam_ looked sharply at her __damane.  Keille, who knew what to expect, stretched again, hearing the other _raken_-riders shifting around her._

             A silver line appeared midway between the two tall poles as she watched, glimmering in the early morning sunshine.  Then it seemed to rotate, or _swing outward through the area around it, becoming a square doorway, filling the entire gap between the poles, which looked out onto a different landscape, one of a long valley between two low lines of hills.  A mass of rude, uncouth-looking tents were in the distance, and as they watched, the tents suddenly began to boil with activity.  In the distance, dreaming at the other end of the low gap, stood a high, square black tower, looming over the area.  _Isengard,_ Keille guessed. Keille spared a moment to glance back at High Lady Suroth, and saw that the Others behind her were staring at the poles, transfixed.  Keille shrugged to herself.   _Perhaps they don't have Traveling _ter'angreal, she mused, then forgot it as the horsemen and __morat'lopar passed swiftly through the Gateway, forming a line of protection for the slower-moving pikemen and _sul'dam _to pass through—ordinarily the _damane_ could very well protect themselves, but High Lady Suroth had sent the pikemen in case the Shadowspawn had something that could work against channelers; not knowing what the capabilities of these Shadowspawn were, Suroth had decided better to be safe than sorry.  The __to'raken were lumbering into motion now, running the necessary few steps for the heavily laden beasts to lift from the ground and take to the air, winging through the gate; Keille grabbed for her straps as she felt her __raken shift under her, then leap into the air at Briande's direction, gaining altitude and height.  The other __rakens formed up behind, and their formation arrowed steadily forward into the Gateway.  Keille could not repress a grin.  It was beginning._

The _to'raken_ were first through that unearthly doorway, Elrond saw; so clumsy and crude on the ground, yet graceful in the air, the _to'raken_ arrowed through the gateway, then smoothly spread out, winging far and fast along the hilltops and passing out of even his sight into the distance; he could see along the hilltops individual shapes beginning to stand up now, to rise out of the grass, and guessed intuitively that those shapes must be the—the—Fists of Heaven—that High Lady Suroth had been talking about, that had been in position as of last night.  The _to'rakens were dropping to the hilltops, adding additional forces to those on the ground, even as he watched.  The __rakens remained in close, circling above the battlefield like great vultures, waiting their chance.  _

Thoroughly unnerved by the opening of that unsettling—whatever-it-was—Elrond almost missed the moment when Suroth's _to'raken lurched into movement, lumbering the few steps needed for flight, then launching itself into the air.  He had ridden Eagles before, so was not unaccustomed with flight; still, the jolt was unnerving.  Even more unnerving was that—strange—portal.  He had seen nothing like it in his life before, and upon its being opened, had instinctively glanced back to check Mithrandir's reaction.  Mithrandir's reaction had not reassured him; if anything the Grey Pilgrim looked even more stunned than he was.  _The arts these Seanchan have—__

The thought broke off as Suroth's _to'raken dipped through the gate.  The wrenching sense of disorientation that struck him ended all thought for a time, and when he regained his bearings, shaken and dismayed, he could not remember what he had been thinking before.  High Lady Suroth seemed to notice nothing about the transition.  She was leaning forward past the __der'morat's shoulder—Amelya Restarik—and was pointing at the ground far below them.  "Look at that," she said, clicking her tongue as the pikemen marched through.  "Too slow, too slow…."_

"The Shadowspawn will be formed up in moments," Amelya replied to her, looking back at Suroth and gesturing downward also; the Orcs, boiling out of their tents, were rushing to assemble in blocks even as the Seanchan spoke.  Harsh, barking shouts drifted up to where Suroth and the others circled lazily on the winds above the encampment; Elrond could hear the panic and fear even through the rough Orcish tongue.  The Seanchan did not seem to notice.

"All the better, if the _sul'dam get through quickly enough.  __If," Suroth repeated, snorting at the ground.  "Ah, here they go…." As she spoke, the chained women began passing through.  Suroth looked up from the ground, squinting into the distance.  "Are the __to'raken in position yet?"_

"Looks like the first set are; the others are too far off for me to see," Amelya repeated.  The _to'raken's_ wings canted slightly as Amelya drew it around into a circle, hovering on the air currents high above the ground, crossing paths with _rakens_ also circling the gyre.  One of those _rakens_ carried his wife, Elrond knew, and he looked for her as they passed the _rakens in turn, but could not discern her.  Perhaps she was avoiding his gaze._

Suroth seemed pleased.  "Excellent," she said warmly, indicating the last of the chained women passing through below.  "And the Shadowspawn are forming up right on time."  She glanced back at Elrond and the others behind her.  "Now, Others of Middle-Earth, you will see how Seanchan fight their battles."  She looked forward again, with a small, utterly confident smile. 

As she spoke, the Orcs had assembled in formation.  A devilish howling went up from their lines, and they threw themselves into a charge, thundering closer and closer to the lines of pikemen.  Elrond felt himself tense just watching it.  The Orcs were drawing nearer—

A call went up, from the assembled chained women—he recognized it as the voice of the _Der'Sul'dam_ Eilei Katrell:  "First-rank _sul'dam!  Shield of Air!"  In response, the entire first rank of the double-ranked lines of chained women moved forward.  The women wearing the bracelet as one turned and scowled or spoke at the women in collars--_

And the Orcs smashed into an invisible barrier fifty feet from the line of pikemen.

At least, that was how it seemed to Elrond, watching from _to'raken_-back.  The air suddenly shimmered in a line fifty feet in front of the pikemen, and the advancing Orc line struck that solid line with a crash.  The Orcs in front began to push and struggle, but the press of the Orcs in back of them smashed them up against the wall and did not let them move; they could not advance, and within moments, their lines were in confusion.  Elrond swallowed, and turned to glance back at Mithrandir and Aragorn; neither of them looked any more easy than Elrond felt.  What had the Seanchan done—  

"Ah," Suroth smiled, looking down.  "It seems they did not have channelers after all.  Perhaps the pikemen were unnecessary.   That is good, though; it makes things easier."

Then the cry went up again from the _Der'Sul'dam Katrell:  "Second-rank s__ul'dam!  Blades of Air!"_

And it began.

Elrond knew battle.  He had seen it before, three thousand years ago, during the first War of the Ring; he knew what it was to stand on the line, to see the hordes of evil rushing down on him, to fear for his long life, to see friends fall screaming in agony, to kill and kill again, even to take joy in it, in setting his strength against the foe, and knowing that he—not his enemy—would live to see another day.  He knew battle.  He _knew it.  It held no strangeness for him.  It could frighten him, yes; horrify him, never._

This—what the Seanchan did—was not battle.  It was slaughter.

There was no other word for it.  Slaughter.

The first rank of _sul'dam split apart and stepped back, allowing the second rank of chained women to come through.  The Orcs were still trapped up against the invisible barrier protecting the pikemen and the chained women behind them; they had not yet gotten their feet under them and were still struggling to find their bearings.  The chained women of the second rank stepped up and forward; each forked-lightning woman turned and spoke to her dark-dressed, collared woman.  The collared women as one stepped forward, each frowning sharply—_

And the Orcs fell apart.

Elrond could not think of a way to describe it better than that.  He had never seen anything like it before in his life, and had no way to conceptualize it—could barely even _understand_ it.  What happened then was something so completely outside his frame of reference that he could scarcely even think about it coherently.  The Orcs—fell—apart.  It was—his mind groped, searching desperately for some way to comprehend what he was seeing—it was as if someone had taken two enormous knives, each as long as the entire row of Orcish lines, and sliced at the Orcs with them—one at chest level, one at knee level.  Those in the front rank fell in three pieces to the earth below, which instantly turned dark with foul, Orcish blood.  He could only stare in horror—they had not been able to make a defense—they could not even _reach the Seanchan forces—_

Those in the second rank had not realized what had happened, it had been so quick; they continued to advance and ran right into those still-advancing invisible blades, to fall also in pieces on the earth.  Then the third rank, which was trying to turn by this time, but not fast enough; they also were struck by the blades.  All this time, the chained women made no sound, gave no sign; the lightning-clad women merely stared at the dark-clad ones, the dark-clad ones stared grimly out into the field.  The rest of the Seanchan looked on in silence, regarding the carnage, or looking at the chained, unmoving women.  Somehow that unearthly silence and immobility made this all the more frightening.  It looked as if the Orcish lines were falling apart simply because the Seanchan willed it, and the face of that implacable will Elrond found terrifying.

"Excellent.  _Excellent,_" he heard Suroth say warmly in front of him, regarding the carnage below.   "This may be even easier than we thought."

By this time what was going on was beginning to penetrate through to the Orcs; the fourth rank fought its way around in place and began to struggle, to try to force its way through the rank behind it.  Terrified, panicked screaming drifted up to them as the fourth rank attempted to escape the silent fate that was coming for it.  Their struggles did them no good at all, however; the silent, invisible blades cut into those in the fourth rank and dropped them in bleeding chunks upon the ground.  The entire formation had disintegrated by now as the panic of those in the forward ranks communicated itself to those in the back.  Nobody could stand up to this, no matter how brave.  The Orcs could not even fight back.  They could not reach the Seanchan forces behind the solid, invisible barrier somehow else created by the chained women, and when they tried, they were cut down by the deadly blades.  As he watched, a line of twelve archers formed out of the swirling, struggling maelstrom of Orcs desperate to escape below; formed and launched arrows hissing at the Seanchan.  The arrows struck the barrier and fell, harmless, to the ground; one moment later, the Orcish archers too collapsed in bloody chunks to the earth.  Watching—unable to look away—Elrond was seized by a horrible, horrible pity for them, the likes of which he had never thought to feel for any of these terrible twisted creatures.  Scarcely aware of what he was doing, he clutched at Suroth's shoulder.  "Stop," he pleaded, barely able to make himself heard through the chaos and bedlam below, only half aware that he even spoke.  "Stop, please—don't—"

She did not hear him.  She shook his grip off as if it were nothing, inconsequential, a fly or other insect that had landed on her, perhaps.  "Look at that," she said, apparently to Amelya.  "It looks like they've figured it out."

Below, the Orcish lines had utterly broken in the face of that implacable doom.  They were running wildly below, in panic, back to the assumed safety of the tents perhaps, grinding earth and blood and flesh below them into a terrible mixture of foul, ruined mud.  The blades swooped after them, catching a stray Orc here or there, but not the numbers of before.

Suroth sat back in her saddle.  When she spoke, her voice seemed deeply satisfied.  "They're panicking.  This is good.  Now we wish to keep them from catching their heads long enough to realize that they might be able to do something about this.  Amelya, can you see?  Are the Fists of Heaven in position along the hilltops?"

" As far as I can see, yes, High Lady," Amelya responded calmly.

"Good."  She glanced back at Elrond and the others.  "It is only necessary that they keep the Orcs from escaping," she explained to them, somehow not seeing their expressions of horror.  "We want to trap them between our _damane_ hammer and the anvil that is this Isengard—though it will not be for long, not once our _damane have their way with it…."  Suroth trailed off and put two fingers to her lips, giving a piercing whistle that rang out over the battlefield below, cutting through all the bedlam and chaos.  At once, her Seanchan turned to look at her, both those on the ground and those on the __rakens in the air.  Suroth held her hands above her head and gestured sharply._

At once the circling rakens separated and peeled off, clearing the air above the encampment.  Below, Eilei Katrell called again, "Second-rank _sul'dam_!  At will!"  Elrond almost covered his face with his hands, unwilling to see more such terrible destruction, but in the end found that he could not look away.

The second-rank _sul'dam_ now, with a terrible certainty, followed the orders of Eilei Katrell.  The lightning-forked women turned to their collared servants as one, spoke to them sharply—

And bolts of silver-blue lightning began to streak down from a clear-blue sky.

They fell on the camp, striking with the regularity of a drumbeat or a beating heart, scything down upon tents and supplies and Orcs and wagons and horses.  Again and again they struck earthward as thunder rent the air, shredded it; the lightning struck crashing to the ground, throwing up soil and dirt and refuse where they struck, starting blazing fires that sprang up quickly amid the foul encampment.

If the Orcs had been terrified before, this drove them right out of their minds.  A single howl of mad fear rose to meet the watchers' ears, as if the entire camp of Orcs had cried out at once with one voice a terror so deep that it needed no words.  Below, first by ones and twos, then in dozens, the Orcs began to turn and run, all semblance of order lost; some cast their weapons away, while others sobbed in terror as they ran, in straight, all-out flight back to the safety of Isengard, hazy at the other end of the low rift.  As they went, the lightning bolts continued their steady, metronomic march up the low valley, the thunderous crashes of their downward strikes coming at intervals so close that it seemed like a pulse.  At his back, Elrond could feel Mithrandir's horror, Aragorn's shock; they matched his own at the brutality of the slaughter below them.

The Seanchan did not notice. 

"Soon they'll be out of range," Amelya commented only.

Suroth sighed in exasperation.  "Too slow," she said again, shaking her head, as below the _Der'Sul'dam shouted.  Her commands drifted up to them, carried on the wind._

"First-rank _damane!_  Lower the Shield!  Pass the pikemen forward, and advance!"

In the air, one of the circling _rakens_ suddenly stroked up and above the plane in which the rest of them flew.  Elrond's eyes were drawn, despite his horror, to the two forms that sat aboard the _raken—in particular, to the unusually tall form of the front rider.  In a voice so familiar that it tore his heart, that rider straightened in her straps, and shouted, "__Morat'raken!  Pursue and harry!  Pursue and harry!"_

The _rakens pivoted around their wingtips and broke like a flock of deadly birds, chasing the stampeding orcs; now arrows began to lance earthward, from the back-riders on the rakens, and from the heights, where even now the last of the _to'raken_ were offloading their Fists of Heaven.  The cavalry were pouring forward now, the cavalry and the_ lopar_, closing in on the rear of the thoroughly routed orcs as the _raken_ struck their center and sides.  The lightning bolts at least had ceased striking the earth, though Elrond scarcely noticed; the death pouring down on the Orcs from the skies and the heights, advancing from behind, was more than enough to keep them terrified. _

Below, on the ground, the chained women were advancing, slowly but inexorably, over the ruined ground in the direction of the fleeing Orcs.  

Suroth clicked her tongue again.  "Too slow," she repeated in frustration, watching the panicked chaos below.  There was something horrific in the detached, dispassionate way that she spoke.  "The Empress has done experiments," she said now, turning back again to those behind her "—mounting _sul'dam/damane_ pairs on horses or _to'raken—but so far it interferes with their cohesion and ability to work together in great numbers.  The units in training were nowhere near ready to go with us when we first took ship for Middle-Earth."_

"Is that so?"  That was Mithrandir, speaking faintly; Elrond only needed to look back to see that Mithrandir was as horrified as he was.  Aragorn said nothing, simply staring at the awful ground with an expression that might have been carved from stone.

"Have no fear, though," Amelya said now, looking around from the front of the _to'raken.  "The Fists of Heaven and the __raken-riders will keep them headed in the right direction, and the cavalry will bottle them up until the _sul'dam_ can reach them."_

Elrond must have said something in reply—he knew not what—but he could not take his eyes off the scurrying Orcs below, the _raken-_riders raining death on them from the skies, the Fists of Heaven in place along the ridgetops….

"Supreme _Der'Morat Restarik.  Let us pursue," Suroth suggested._

"As the High Lady commands," Amelya responded, and guided her _to'raken_ after the others.


	6. Those Left Behind

_What is the real reason you are willing to sacrifice your immortality_….?

That question lingered with Arwen as she went about the rounds of the day, recurring to her at odd moments.  _What is the real—_

_For love,_ she might have responded, but the calm voice of that Seanchan woman would not accept that explanation.  _You seem too intelligent to me to _really _fall for this belief of true, perfect love at first sight, worth any sacrifice, so…_

Arwen shook her head, dislodging the question, but it kept returning to haunt her.  _What is the—_

Aragorn was gone, as was her father, and Mithrandir.  They had left that morning, before Arwen had emerged from her chambers; Elladan and Elrohir  had been left behind to run the household and confide to her where her father and betrothed had gone.   They had gone out with about half the Seanchan army, to Isengard; Elladan had told Arwen that the Seanchan had used some sort of device—when she had asked about it further, he had only shaken his head and confessed that he had never seen anything like it before.  Then he and Elrohir had been called away to deal with the delegates, who were in an uproar, and Arwen was left to her own devices.  She had spent much of the day alone, wandering in useless isolation throughout her gardens, her quarters, the house, hearing Keille Sar's question dogging her footsteps.  Sometimes she would stop and look out over the balcony, over the grassy slope where the remainder of the Seanchan army practiced; other times she would wander down to where she had sat with Keille the night before, to gaze up at the pure, unchanging stone of Luthien's statue and think.  _What is the—_

Not even her _father_ had thought to ask her that question.  Not even her father had thought to question the idea that she was willing to sacrifice her immortality for the sake of love.  Even her father had accepted without question the idea that Arwen at least felt that Aragorn and his love was—worth—her—death.

_Of course, you know Aragorn would never—would never behave in that fashion._

She knew it.  Of course she did; she knew that Aragorn would never strike or harm her in any way, or their children.  He would never harm her; he did not drink to excess, and as far as she knew he had never even looked at another woman since he had met her.  She had no fears that he would—would be unfaithful.

_Are you sure?_

Yes.  She was.

So then what could account for the deep feeling of unease that had risen inside her at Keille's calm-eyed disregard of the tale of their love?

Arwen perched on the edge of the fountain, drew her knees up under her and propped her chin in her hands, unmindful of how she might appear to any observer; there was no one to see her.

_Aragorn loves me.  I know it._  She did, knew it with a confidence and an instinct stronger than words.  Then why—

_It is just that—he has not had time to spend with me lately,_ she thought forlornly.  _It is simply the war that places demands on him.  If he had more time to spend with me, then surely this unease would vanish._

That thought led to another.  _How much time will he have for you once he becomes King of Gondor and of Arnor? _

She attempted to push that thought aside, frowning slightly to herself as she did so.

_Think.  What did you tell Keille about the reason Aragorn could not go over the Sea with you?_

"Because he was the heir and he had a responsibility to take the throne," she murmured aloud, unaware she spoke.

The war had laid responsibilities on him.  But would those responsibilities vanish once it was over?  Once Aragorn had taken his rightful place as King of Gondor and of Arnor?

_Once you have forfeited your rightful place at the side of your father, to journey over the Sea?_

The thought came unbidden, eradicated almost as soon as she recognized it.  

Yet she _did recognize it, and frowned slightly, unaware of it._

_What is the—_

Her thought broke off as she became aware of a rising commotion drifting up to her ears from the direction of the Seanchan encampment.  Swiftly she turned, and moved with quick, light steps down the stone path around the bend in the hedge, to see what the matter was.

A flood of Seanchan soldiers were spilling throughout the encampment, and the sky was filled with stacked black masses of _raken_ and _to'raken, winging over the encampment to settle to the west of the camp, in their pens and corrals.  The army had returned.  _Father…Aragorn,_ she thought, and hurried down the path to meet up with them._

Hordes of people were streaming every which way throughout the camp by the time she reached it, and for a moment she could not find the ones she sought.   Then, as she stepped out of the way of a passing cavalryman, she saw them.  They had dismounted a _to'raken_ and were standing in the middle of the field, oblivious to those around them.

They looked as if they were in shock.  Her father's face had a peculiar set expression the likes of which she had never seen before; Aragorn looked stunned, as if he had been struck by an incredible internal blow that had cut him deeply.  In conversation with Mithrandir, they came toward her without even noticing her; she simply did not register.  Quickly, Arwen stepped into their paths.  

"Father—Aragorn!" she exclaimed, forcing them to halt; the two men who meant most in the world to her turned and looked at her as if they had never seen her before.  Slowly recognition came back to them as she continued to speak.  "Are you well?  When I heard that you had gone out I was concerned about you and I….I…."

Arwen trailed off as the males continued to stare at her without speaking.  "I…." She tried again, but received no reaction.  Now Aragorn spoke, coming forward and taking her in his arms.  

"Arwen, I cannot speak with you now," he told her, his voice leaden and distant.  "I must—there is much I must discuss with your father and with Mithrandir.  Why don't you go and occupy yourself with work in your gardens?  I will—I will join you later, if there is time."

Arwen backed away from him, staring at him and at her father.   "Father—Aragorn—what—" she faltered.  "What happened—what did you—"

"Never mind," her father interrupted her sharply.  "Do as Aragorn suggested, daughter," he told her sternly, the sternness exacerbated by the hollow, stunned look in his eyes.   "We—there is no time to speak with you now."  As Arwen drew back further, looking at him with her own stunned expression, her father, Aragorn, and Mithrandir drew together and passed her, moving slowly and stiffly, as if they were half asleep.  Arwen watched them with wide eyes as they rounded a corner and were obscured from sight, standing frozen to the spot.

They had not spoken to her, had not told her what transpired in any way, but as her men left her behind, part of their conversation drifted back to her—"Isengard," she heard, "Saruman", "Suroth,"  "_damane" and "fallen."  Something had occurred.  Something momentous, and they would not—they did not—tell her.  They had pushed past her as if she did not even exist…._

She stayed there for what felt like a long, long time; then, seemingly of her own accord, her feet began to move.  She turned and started west, to the _raken_ pens.  Toward Keille Sar. 

*

The _raken pens were chaotic when she reached them, with __raken-riders landing and taking off in all directions; Arwen wove her way through them carefully, looking for Keille, feeling uncertain and nervous and out of place.  Slurring Seanchan voices rose around her on all sides as she moved among them, looking around her with wide eyes.  Finally she caught sight of Keille, climbing down off of the back of a __raken, leaning heavily against its side.  Quickly she went over to her._

"Keille?" she asked uneasily.

Keille turned sharply at her voice, as if in surprise, and her eyes widened.  "_Arwen?_" she asked, seemingly stunned.  "What are you _doing_ here?"

"I wanted to—Father and Aragorn came back and they would not speak to me," she explained.  "They would not tell me what was going on, so I—I thought I might find you and—are you hurt?" she asked in alarm as Keille reeled suddenly, catching herself on Iraumu, who cooed and twisted his head around to gently nip her shoulder.

"Eh.  Not bad—I caught an arrow in the leg, that's all—I pulled it out," she continued, gesturing downward, and now Arwen saw that Keille's lower right leg was stained with red.

"Shouldn't—you must see the healers!" Arwen insisted.

Keille shrugged.  "Yeah, but I had to take care of Iraumu first.  Briande got rushed off for a conference with High Lady Suroth as soon as we hit the ground, and I had to see that Iraumu got taken care of.  Just give me a moment to find an apprentice _morat'raken_—"  She turned and scanned the mass of women milling around the _raken_ lines.   After a moment, she reached out and snagged a young girl with short black curls hurrying past.  "Yisuen!"

The girl turned immediately.  "Yes, _morat'raken_ Keille!" she announced, her voice full of self-importance.  

Keille handed her the reins to her _raken_.  "Do you think you can see Iraumu into his box, fed and watered?" she asked.  "I have to get to the tent of the healers to have them do something about this leg."  

"Do not fear, _morat'raken_ Keille!" the girl—Yisuen—replied smartly.  "You can trust me!"

"I certainly hope so," Keille replied, then stepped away from her _raken_ as the girl led him off.  Arwen noticed that Keille was smiling as she watched the girl go.  "Apprentices at that age are so cute," she told Arwen.  "They're so _serious,_ as if they think the whole fate of the Ever Victorious Army depends on them."  Then she winced as she rested her weight on her leg.

"Is there any way I can assist you?" Arwen asked anxiously, noticing the quick spasm of pain that crossed the Seanchan's face.

"Yes, actually—let me lean on you while we go to the healing tents," Keille responded.  "That way we'll get there faster." 

With Keille leaning heavily on Arwen, they found their way to the healers' section of the camp.  "Hey, Ajan," Keille called out, greeting a man who was having a cut on his face stitched by a tall, lanky-looking female.  "Whatcha doin' here?"

"Hey, Keille," he said back, smiling as he caught sight of the two women; his affectionate glance at Keille made Arwen realize suddenly that this must be the sweetheart that she had talked about, in among the pikemen.  "Got another cut on mah ugly face, that's what.  Who's your friend?" he asked, looking at Arwen curiously.

"This is Arwen," Keille said brightly.  "She's the daughter of that Other Elrond—you know, the one who owns the house?  Arwen," she continued, turning back to the somewhat disconcerted Elfmaiden, "this is my sweetheart, Ajan Idwalle."

Arwen murmured something appropriate to Ajan's nod—what, she was not exactly sure.

"You should take better care of yourself; that face isn't yours alone, you know," Keille scolded him affectionately, letting go of Arwen to go and drape her arm over his shoulder.  "You're gonna get too scarred up and then I'm going to dump you for a young _morat'lopar_."  She gave him a kiss on the cheek.  Arwen glanced away, suddenly and unaccountably embarrassed; she heard the healer clucking in irritation.

"Hold still or these stitches are going to be uneven," the bony woman chided.

"How about you, what are you doing here?" he asked Keille matter-of-factly.

"I got myself shot in the flaming leg, can you believe it?  By some goat-kissing motherless son of a Trolloc.  Briande really let me have it too."

Ajan clicked his tongue at her.  "Be more careful, willya?  I'd hate to have to find myself another sweetheart….and if Briande gets too mad at you, that's just what I'll have to do," he teased, to Keille's delighted laughter.

"She's not so bad, you just have to know how to handle her, that's all."

"That's it," the healer said, giving Ajan a whack on the shoulder.  "All done.  You know the drill by now—keep it clean, come back and see a healer in five days to get the stitches out.  Now get out of the way and let me get to the _morat'raken._"

"All right."  Ajan jumped down from the stool; then as Arwen watched in open surprise, he put his arms around Keille, kissed her, and murmured softly into her ear, "Can I see you tonight?"

Keille tipped her head back and grinned up at him.  "Wouldn't miss it," she replied warmly.  

He put one hand alongside Keille's face tenderly, then gave her an affectionate clout on the shoulder.  "See ya then," he said cheerfully, turned, and strolled off, whistling the song Keille had been singing the night before.  The bony healer now gestured at Keille.

"Come on, up onto the stool," she said wearily, dropping her needle and thread into a brass pot on the ground by her feet and taking a clean set of implements from a tray at her right hand.  "Here," the healer continued, indicating Arwen.  "Since you're here, you might as well be of some use.  Hand me things when I ask for them," she said, and shoved the tray at Arwen, who took it by reflex.  The healer paid her no heed, but turned her attention to cleaning the wound on Keille's leg.

"So why did you come looking for me?" Keille asked warmly, though she winced a little as the healer probed deeply into her wound. 

Arwen had almost forgotten, but now her original purpose came back to her.  "I wanted to ask you about the battle," she said slowly.  "I—"

"Scissors," the healer interrupted.  Arwen handed her the scissors by rote.

"I tried to speak to my father and my betrothed about it, to ask them, but they—"

"They were busy, right?  Wouldn't talk to you?" Keille was grinning.

"How did you know?" she asked, looking back at the himan in open surprise.

"Just guessed.  Frankly, they looked like they'd been hit pretty hard when we touched down; I don't know why….maybe they hadn't seen Seanchan fighting before," Keille replied, looking thoughtful, then shrugged.  "Yeah, I guess maybe they—you don't have _damane_ over here, do you?" she asked, looking at Arwen curiously.

"_Damane?_  I—I don't think so; that's not a term I've ever heard before."

"That's what I thought.  Huh."  Keille fell silent and pondering again, until Arwen, daring greatly, spoke.

"Were you going to tell about the battle?  What happened?"

"Oh, right, the battle," said Keille, coming back to herself with a start.  "Well, here's what happened—you might want to sit down; this is going to be kind of long," she said, grinning, and was thwacked by the healer.

"Try not to move around so much; it's messing up the stitches," the lanky woman ordered, bending back to her work.

"Sorry.  Anyway.  The battle.  Well," Keille began, "it all started when we passed through the _ter'angreal_—we have one that lets us travel great distances in a short while.  We passed through, Briande and I, at the head of our _raken_ flights, and there were the Shadowspawn spread out below us—they didn't even know we were coming, which is just the way we like it," she added, grinning.  "We completely caught them off guard.  So as soon as we got there, the _damane_ went into action, with Shield and Blades of Air—normally these don't often work in battle, as the other side has _damane_ too that are able to counter our _damane,_ but High Lady Suroth and Ground Captain Etari felt that perhaps this land did not have _damane_, or not _damane_ as good as ours, so they tried it anyway.   This time," she said with pleasure, "it worked like a charm.  Let me tell you, you get so used to seeing _damane _not work in battle you almost forget what they can do if you give them a chance…."

And so Keille continued, regaling her with the battle in best soldier fashion, spurred on perhaps to greater flights of fancy by her attentive and admiring audience.  Arwen was rapt as she listened to Keille, though she had no idea what _damane_ were herself.  This was much different from the great battle-epics she had heard in the past, like those that told of the Last Alliance and their final battle against Sauron; those songs were sung with beautiful turns of phrase and melody that stirred her soul and inspired her.  This was something completely different.  Although she was clearly enjoying herself, and as a result telling the story in a very dramatic fashion, Keille utilized no exalted speeches or ornate words, just a blunt, straightforward, _raken_-eye view of what had transpired, told in a rough but essentially warm way.  And the effect could not have been more moving if the Seanchan had planned it.  As she spoke, Arwen could feel the sun on her shoulders, the dip and sway of Iraumu underneath her, see the Orcs down below scurrying in fear, hear the crashes and cries as the _damane_ went into action; she felt Keille's exhilaration and excitement, her worry over her sweetheart—distant and pushed to one side, but there—she heard Keille's sharp cry at the arrow that pierced her leg, felt her pain and anger that was quickly subsumed under duty, and shared with the short human her sense of pride in her army and triumph as Isengard fell; at the fall of Isengard, Arwen actually jumped and asked her with wide eyes, "Did Isengard really—is it really gone?"

"Oh yeah," Keille said with emphasis and launched into a description.  "After we had pushed the Shadowspawn back and trapped them against the citadel with our _damane,_ there wasn't a lot left of them.  High Lady Suroth gave the order to surround the citadel and break the doors—she wanted to see if there was anything useful inside it—but she was met on the steps by a man in white—"

Arwen saw how it must have been:  Saruman—for that was who the White Wizard was, even if Keille did not know it—standing on the steps, his plans in ruins about him, facing down the collected Seanchan army.

"Suroth ordered her _to'raken_ to land," Keille continued with enthusiasm.  "She dismounted as soon as it touched the ground—we were in the air, circling, keeping watch for any forces that might be regrouping to come at us again, so I had a good view of the whole thing—Suroth dismounted, and the Others on the _to'raken_—that would be your father, and Aragorn, and that strange human Gandalf—followed her.  She walked right up to him, where he stood on the steps, and called out in a loud, ringing voice, 'Are you Saruman, also known as the White Wizard and master of Isengard?'  And he answered—it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop, the entire army was holding its breath—he answered in the softest, humblest voice you could _imagine,_ 'Yes, that is my name.  I apologize if I have offended or injured you in some way, as I see that I must have, to enrage you so—'  And Suroth cut him off.  It looked like the Others in back were trying to speak to her, but she didn't pay 'em any attention; she simply announced, 'Saruman, also known as the White Wizard and the master of Isengard, I am High Lady Suroth of the Blood of Paendrag Hawkwing.  I hereby place you under arrest by order of the Crystal Throne of Seanchan as a suspected Darkfriend and aider and abetter of the Dark One's forces.  As such a crime is punishable by death within the Empire, I must inform you if you do not cooperate I will not hesitate to order your death—you will either come quietly, or you will come in pieces, but you _will _accompany us back to Rivendell Garrison.'

"Well, I'll tell you," Keille went on, "that Other Elrond—your father, I'm sorry—did not look happy when he heard that, and he started to say something, but neither High Lady Suroth nor that Saruman paid him any mind.  Saruman was staring at the High Lady really hard, like he was trying to do that street-show trick where they put you in a trance and have you do things.  After a while he spoke—and when he spoke, oh, I'll tell you—melted honey could not have sounded any sweeter than his voice!  He said smoothly to the High Lady, 'But there must have been some mistake.  I do not, nor ever have supported the forces of darkness within this land; I only seek to protect what is mine.  Rather than fighting me, you should join me so that together we can defend ourselves against our enemies—'  oh, I can't remember all of what he said, but it was a lot, and it was more the way he was saying it than what he was saying, but he made you feel like he was talking the _truth_, I'll tell you.  It was like a langor was falling over the whole army; we didn't want to do anything so much as listen to that beautiful voice talk."  

"It makes sense," Arwen murmured thoughtfully.  "Father has always said that Saruman's greatest weapon has always been his voice; he can make you believe that the sky is green, is what he told me.  How did you counter it?" 

Keille smiled.  "Well, I'll tell you, I don't know how long he went on for; I kind of lost track of time.  I did notice that your father and Gandalf in particular seemed to be trying to get to High Lady Suroth, but they couldn't make it past the _so'jhin_, and really, it didn't seem to matter.  All I wanted to do was listen to him.  But after a while, _Der'Sul'dam_ Katrell came back—she and a company of other _sul'dam_ had been chasing down straggling Shadowspawn.  She came back with her _damane,_ and stopped as soon as she got close enough to hear that voice.  She listened for about one second, I'll tell you, looked around some, and then I saw her eyes narrow, and she shouted, '_Sul'dam!_  That man is using Compulsion!  Stop him!'

"The _minute_ she shouted that, it was like someone threw a brick at a trap-worm nest!  The entire army burst into commotion.  The High Lady jumped back as if she'd seen a snake.  I'll tell you, I almost fell off Iraumu!  The idea that someone had been using tainted _saidin_ on me—"  Keille shuddered, and the healer ordered her curtly, 

"Stand still, or this is going to take longer."

"Sorry."  Keille turned back to Arwen, who frowned, confused. 

"Compulsion?"

"Yeah, it's a trick of the One Power that some _damane_ can do—these _damane_ are among the most prized by the Empress.  They weave flows in such a way as to ensure that their target performs their will and not his or her own.  So I've heard, the target even thinks it's his or her own idea!  The Empress doesn't use them often, and not unless it's necessary, but still—it gives me the creeps just _talking_ about it!  Anyway, as soon as our _sul'dam_ had identified what he was doing, they could counter it," she continued, "and they wove flows of Air to stop his mouth, and to bind his arms to his sides, and when they had trussed him up in Air like a _dakka_ bird, the power was gone, and we all felt like ourselves again.  High Lady Suroth was _furious_ that she had been touched with the One Power—and let me tell you, it was a hundred times worse because he was a man.  That power he was wielding wasn't _saidar,_ it was tainted _saidin,_ and that's enough to give _anyone_ the creeps," she added parenthetically but with sincere emotion.  "And there was more to it than that too…"  She fell uncharacteristically silent, and a strange, disturbed look settled over her features.

"What?" Arwen prompted, wanting to find out what it was that made her look like that.

Keille looked back at her now.  "If he was wielding _saidin,_" she said quietly, "and he was if he was using Compulsion, then he is a man who can channel.  Men who can channel—it was channeling men who Broke the World, you know.  Because of the taint.  The taint upon _saidin._  It drove them mad, even as it rotted their bodies, and in their insanity, they used their control of the One Power to do terrible things.  And Suroth knew it."

"What did she do?"

Keille shrugged, her eyes open wide.  "There's only one thing _to_ do, with a man who can channel.  Has to be done, lest channeling men Break the World again, in their madness.  They can't be allowed to live.  It's as simple as that."  Seeing Arwen's expression, she softened slightly.  "I know it sounds horrible, but believe me, the alternative would be even more horrible still.  The world barely survived men channeling _once,_ and even then, millions of lives were lost and the entire _world_ was thrown into chaos for hundreds of years.  We can't even take the _chance_ of that ever happening again, no matter what.  It's gotta be done," she said, shrugging, and patted Arwen's arm.  "So anyway," she continued, "this is what happened.  That—that—White Wizard or whatever his name was lay trussed at her feet, like a _dakka_ bird awaiting slaughter.  He was struggling, but not much—you can't move much in bonds of Air; it's as if the air itself turns to stone around you—you can even kill someone that way, or so my sister tells me; you use the _damane_ to crush them to death with Air, or if it's the Vise of Winds—it's forbidden to spill the blood of Paendrag, so the Vise of Winds is one way of executing traitors and other criminals of the High Blood.  Suroth walked right up to him and looked down at him as he lay there.   She looked down at him, then spoke—she declaimed.  'Now hear all and attend,' she called, and let me tell you, though she didn't shout I think she spoke loud enough that they heard her back in Seanchan.  'This man, Saruman, also known as the White Wizard, and the Master of Isengard, has been found by Supreme _Der'Sul'dam_ Eilei Katrell to be using Compulsion—a talent of the One Power.  He is therefore a man who can channel.'  She stopped there for a moment, letting us all hear what she had said and letting it sink in, and—whoa, I've never heard anything quite like the silence that followed.  'By the law of the Crystal Throne of Seanchan,' she continued after we'd all had a nice long spell to contemplate what she had said earlier, 'men who can channel must be executed on sight, before the taint has a chance to drive them mad, lest in their insanity they Break the World again.'  She glanced back down at him as she spoke and he had gone completely still by this time.  So the High Lady continued,  'His life was already in danger, if he had been shown to be aiding and abetting the forces of the Dark One.  Now, however, it clearly stands forfeit.  Is there any present who wishes to challenge this sentence?'

"Not a single person moved.  I think—I might have seen some shifting among the Others present, but they were silent too.  For my part, let me tell you, as far as I'm concerned?  There was no question.  We had all _felt_ him use Compulsion on us," she said with wide eyes.  "We all _knew_ he could channel.  So Suroth drew her sword and called, 'Since there are no objections, I, High Lady Suroth and commander of the Seanchan Expeditionary Force, now carry out this sentence,' and she stepped forward, and THWACK, that was the end of him.  Good riddance, too—the _last_ thing this world needs is men who can channel," Keille remarked, shivering, and then she looked with frank curiosity at Arwen.  "And afterwards, his body disappeared!  Can you believe it?  I'd never seen anything like it before in my life, I tell you.  Maybe it had something to do with the taint; that's my only guess.  Hey, what do I know about the One Power anyway?"

Arwen was silent, thinking for a long moment; she scarcely knew _what_ to think.  At last she looked up.  "Then what?" she asked.

"Well, after he had been executed, the _sul'dam _and the Fists of Heaven did a quick search of the tower to determine if there was anything of value in there; they came out with a something, I'm not sure what, wrapped in cloth, but that was it.  Once they had cleared the tower, Suroth ordered the _damane_ to destroy it."

"_Could_ they?" Arwen asked, her eyes wide.  "I had always heard that Isengard was indestructible—"

"Well, I'll tell you what they did," said Keille.  "You know that women who can channel tend to be strongest in Air or Water; these are female powers, whereas Earth and Fire are male powers.  Right?"

Arwen did not know, but she nodded anyway, unwilling to stop the flow of words.

"So this is what they did:  they wove Air and Water and Spirit, and transformed all the water in the stones of the fortress instantly to steam.  You might think you need Fire to do that," she continued, "but my sister who's a _sul'dam_ explained it to me; if you do it right, you can just _make_ the water transform, and while there is heat, it is merely a byproduct.  The technique was actually discovered about two hundred years ago for use in mining.  Anyway, they turned all the water in the stones of the fortress to steam at the same moment, and the whole tower just collapsed.  It was really incredible," she continued with enthusiasm.  "You should have seen it—"

And as she continued to describe it, Arwen almost _could_ see it—she could see the sun, warm and bright and hot, beating down on the masses of dull and bronze and metallic armor below, the sky filled with darting _raken_, circling lazily on updrafts and air currents.  She saw High Lady Suroth, standing at the base of the square, blocky form of the black Tower of Isengard, saw her turn, her sword still red and unsheathed from the execution of Saruman; she heard the voice of the Lady of the Blood ringing across the entire gathered assemblage.  She could hear the clanking, groaning and foot-treads of the watching army as those in front pressed back to a safe distance; she could see the two ranks of _sul'dam_ come forward, each with her own _damane_, the _sul'dam's_ dresses bright against the _damane_ drab.  She watched as the dual ranks of _sul'dam_ spread out, stopping before they were too close, surrounding the tower in a solid ring of red and blue and dark gray, with hints of silver that were the _damane's_ collar and leash, heard the command of _Der'Sul'dam_ Eilei Katrell:  "First-rank _damane!_  Shield of Air!  Tie it off!"

"Yes, _Der'Sul'dam!_" came the answer back from many throats, and the air between the ring of _damane_ and the Tower shimmered, growing thicker, denser somehow, as if a light haze overlay the area.

Then _Der'Sul'dam_ Katrell spoke again:  "All _damane!_  Spreading Water!  Now!"

And then?

Silence.  Nothing more, and nothing less.  A hush over the gathering, as all eyes turned in that gleaming, sun-lit morn, to the circle of women, all of them motionless, staring at the huge, blocky shape that was Isengard.

Silence.  At first.  But not for long.  Soon, low, groaning cracks began to be heard over the assemblage, as the stones of the Tower protested the work of the _sul'dam_ and _damane._  They grew sharper and sharper, louder and louder, as the watching army observed.  

Suddenly a fissure appeared, running from the ground up the side of the tower, splitting open with the sharp crack of a branch breaking, only a hundred times louder.  Another one, and then a third joined it, and then with a low crackling, a fine network of little, hairline fractures spread its way out over the surface.

"_Sul'dam!_  Full strength from your _damane!_" shouted Katrell.

Another moment, two.  The tiny fissures grew both wider and deeper, multiplying with unbelievable quickness.  The crackling sound grew louder and louder, and the deep groans and sharp snapping grew faster and quicker.  A shudder, a second one, and then, slowly and majestically, the Tower of Isengard began to fall.

It fell straight down, Arwen saw this clearly, throwing up a wave of smoke and debris—this struck the Shield of Air and roiled harmlessly inside that barrier.  It fell straight down, with a thunderous noise as if the world were coming to an end, sending up shockwaves through the ground to be felt clearly by the watching Seanchan army.  The updraft from the collapse buoyed the wings of the _raken_ and _to'raken; _they bobbed like corks in the turbulent air, the lighter _raken_ more than the heavier _to'raken._  And when the dust settled, drawn on flows of Air from scores of waiting _damane,_ when the air cleared, when the _raken _and _to'raken _resumed their lazy, circling flight, what had been Isengard…was no more.

The whole process, Keille said, from the initial contact to the execution of Saruman to the fall of Isengard, had taken less than a day.

"And now," Keille finished simply, "on to Mordor." 

With that deceptively unassuming sentence, the _raken-_rider fell silent.  And Arwen returned, slowly, to the world around her—the noise of the Seanchan healer tents, the masses of Seanchan milling in all directions, the rays of the late afternoon sun, slanting in.  _What had been Isengard…was no more._

For a long moment, she did not speak, too absorbed in her thoughts, trying to sort out her own feelings.  Isengard…the threat that Isengard represented…removed.  In less than the space of a day.  Gone.  The massive armies of Isengard?  Destroyed.  Saruman the White, of the silver tongue?  Executed under the laws of the Crystal Throne, as a man who could channel.  The Tower of Isengard?  Crumbled to dust.  _And now,_ she had heard Keille say, this unassuming little _morat'raken_ who represented the merest fraction of the immeasurably vast and diverse Seanchan army, this plain-mannered mortal who was so incredibly young compared to herself and her father, this _morat'raken_ who was only one of thousands like her, girls from the streets and towns and farms of Seanchan, trained under the Crystal Throne and shaped into soldiers in the Seanchan army, who was one part of the vast Ever Victorious Army composed of men and women from all walks of life, from all over the strange and distant land of Seanchan itself, _on to Mordor._

No doubt, in her tone.  No uncertainty, hesitation, or fear.  Not even the slightest suggestion that they might not succeed in their task.  Just—_on to Mordor._  

She stirred now, voiced those thoughts as Keille sat in her own silence.  "You—do not fear?  That you might—that you might not succeed?"

Keille blinked and looked back at her, her expression somewhat confused.  "Why wouldn't we succeed?" she asked, in the same way that she might have said, _Why wouldn't it hit the ground?_ if Arwen had suggested that a dropped stone might not fall.  "It is not called the Ever Victorious Army for no reason," she continued gently, as if explaining a fact that Arwen had suddenly, unaccountably forgotten.  "We have _never_ lost a war.  Battles, yes; wars, no.  Whenever we lose a battle—and even when we win—our leaders examine their plans.  They determine what went wrong, and what went right, and in this way refine their strategy, so that they know what to do and what not to do for next time.  Our Empress's generals—may she live forever—have been doing this for almost a thousand years now.  They have gotten very, very good at it."  She smiled at Arwen reassuringly.  "Have no fear.  We don't lose." 

Arwen's brows contracted slightly.  The calm confidence in Keille's tone took her by surprise.  She had heard nothing like it before, from those around her.  The few times she had heard her father or her brothers speak of Mordor—which they only did when they thought she was not around; they did not speak of Sauron to her because they did not want to worry her—there was nothing like this.  She had heard concern, even alarm, and something else—something so deeply hidden that they might not even be aware of it.  An undertone, a feeling that no matter what they might try, they would not succeed, for Sauron _was_ unbeatable.  That undercurrent was always there.  While discussing alliances, while discussing tactics, even when they had first received the _raken_ with the information about the Seanchan army, it had been there.  The feeling that all their efforts were doomed to failure before they even started. Mordor would triumph, in the end, despite anything they might attempt.  No matter what they told her, in an attempt to console her or to ease her worry, no matter what their words said, their eyes had said differently.  For the past thousand years, the tale of doom was the only tale that she had ever sensed in their hearts.

It was only when her father spoke of Aragorn that Arwen had felt this mood starting to lift. As she considered it now—and she had not seen it this way at first, not until she had heard Keille's tale of the battle of Isengard and what the Seanchan could do—it seemed that her father had fixed on Aragorn as _estel_, the only hope to stand against the Shadow, with intense determination—a determination that somehow suddenly appeared vaguely irrational.  She was certain that it was only her father's belief in Aragorn's importance that had allowed him at all to be reconciled to her choice.

At the time, of course, the belief that Aragorn was the only hope had seemed perfectly natural.  Looking at it now, in the cold, clear-eyed light of what she had just heard, Arwen was not so sure.  As she thought about it now, it did seem rather far-fetched.

In fact, she realized with a start, it seemed more than that; it seemed out and out _ridiculous._

She pushed that thought out of her head with the violence of a woman backing away from the edge of a precipice.  The idea that she could consider anything her father thought or did in that fashion rocked her to the core; it shook her more deeply than Keille's cold-eyed appraisal of the tale of her and Aragorn's love had the previous evening, and in a manner far more fundamental to her being.  Under last night's moon, her world had been fractured into pieces; under the sun of this day, the pieces were suddenly falling back together, in ways that they had not fit at first, and the new shapes they were making were deeply disturbing.  The image of her father, the wise, grave, kind and warm figure who had dominated her childhood, who knew all that there was to know, and always spoke nothing but the purest wisdom, suddenly stood out in a harsh, unforgiving new light.

The new thoughts were coming now, faster and faster, and Arwen would have given anything to be able to shut them out.  _He thought Middle-Earth was doomed without Aragorn,_ the cold voice of interior truth spoke now.  _He honestly thought that there was no way to win.  You _know _he did.  And why?  Because they had barely been able to push Sauron back before, with the Last Alliance.  So how did he and Gandalf plan to defeat Sauron this time?  By doing what they had done last time, only with greatly diminished resources and power.  Not by searching for a _new _strategy to fit these new circumstances.  Simply by doing the same thing over again only less well—calling everybody together at the last minute and throwing their forces anyhow against the Shadow.  The Seanchan are only Men, mortals, and they've been steadily building and improving their army for the past thousand years, you heard Keille.  But Father and Gandalf, immortal, both of them, could not see their way clear to doing anything except what they had done before. _

_Stop.  Stop.  I don't want to think this._

But the interior cold voice did not heed.  _Why did Father believe so quickly, so readily in Aragorn? Why did he crown Aragorn "Estel?"  Because Aragorn was a relic from the past.  The Last of the Dunedain.  Isildur's Heir.  The long-lost descendant of Father's brother Elros.  Not because of any intrinsic qualities of worth that Aragorn possessed.  He could have been anyone.  He could have been that Man of Minas Tirith that you have heard Father speak of so disdainfully, and it wouldn't have mattered.  As long as he came with the proper pedigree, Father would have hailed him as the new hope.  You know it. _

_And is that why you loved him, Arwen?  Is that why Father let you love him?_

"No," she murmured under her breath, unaware of Keille looking at her sharply.  "No."

Yes.  She desperately wanted to turn her eyes away, but she could not.  Yes, to some extent, yes.

_Father claims Aragorn is the new hope,_ that cold, unmerciful, truthful voice went on.  _He sees Aragorn as the new hope because he is really the _old_ hope, a relic from the past, the Last Alliance, and it is impossible for Father to believe that Sauron may be defeated without recourse to the past.  You _know _he believes this.  And _it is not true_._

It is not true.

The Seanchan had _proved _it not to be true.  There was another way—perhaps even more than one way—and _Father had not seen it._  Had not even looked for it.

Perhaps—another new thought, one more in an avalanche—

Perhaps he _could_ not.

_And what of Aragorn?_

She raised her hands to her head now, desperate to shut out the thoughts, hearing distantly, vaguely in another world, Keille's voice speaking words of concern.  But it was a hopeless attempt.  _What of Aragorn?  What of his fire, his strength, his courage?  Are those qualities that he _truly _possesses?  Or do you see those things in him because _Father_ sees those things in him, because of his pedigree?_

And underneath that, underlying everything she had thought before, came that awful, unanswerable question.  _What is the _real_ reason that you're choosing to sacrifice your immortality?_

She could not stand it.  Not for another moment.  

Driven by the urge to flee, she thrust herself to her feet.  Keille cried out after her in alarm, but Arwen did not hear her.  She turned tipsily, almost drunkenly, in the direction of her gardens; she ran, gracelessly, fleeing the Seanchan, the encampment; trying to flee her thoughts.

But those thoughts ran with her, and would not leave her be.


	7. Worth the Cost

The three men gathered on the terrace where Elrond had stood yesterday, overlooking the entrance of the Ever Victorious Army.  Not one of them spoke.

They stood instead, not facing each other, staring out over the once-green fields that had surrounded the house—fields now covered with the gray and brown and bronze tents of the Seanchan.  A column of pikemen marched past, their polearms over their shoulders, then a company of _morat'corlm.  __Morat'torm rode by in that strange painted armor, seated on the backs of those even stranger, three-eyed, bronze-scaled cats, talking and joking amiably with one another.  Two __sul'dam strolled by in idle conversation with each other, their leashed __damane walking ahead of them; a _raken_-rider passing by called out, "That you, Seta?  Taking the __damane for a walk?"  The call echoed in the evening air._

"Of course.  You have to exercise your _damane or else they get bored, you know," the __sul'dam replied with calm assurance.  "__Damane like going for walks--don't you, Rili?" she asked, addressing her __damane with gentle warmth._

"Oh, yes, Mistress!"  Rili responded eagerly, and the _sul'dam _and the _raken-rider passed each other by in shadows as the afternoon deepened toward twilight.  In the background, the banners of the Nine Moons waved over High Lady Suroth's tent, indicating that she was in residence; as a formation of _raken_ passed above it, a single __raken suddenly broke out of their double lines and went plunging sharply straight down toward the tent, pulling up mere feet from the highest banner.  Elrond did not need to look to guess the _raken_-riders were the same two he had seen—Celebrian—disciplining the night before._

The Man of the Dunedain, the Elflord, and the Wizard were silent, watching the scene that spread out before them—a scene that was so alien, so outside their sensibilities, that they scarcely knew what to make of it.  The sounds, the sights were like nothing they had seen before.  New things, in this land where everything was ancient.

Still, they watched, as the light declined toward evening.  They watched the soldiers passing, the exotics, the _damane and their _sul'dam_.  They looked outward, at the scene before them, and not inward.  The three could not bear to look inward.  For as alien as the sights before them were, it was nothing to what they had seen earlier that day._

_Isengard.  Gone._  It had happened so—incredibly—fast, with such brutal quickness, efficiency, and speed.  Isengard, which had stood for centuries—gone.  Saruman, who had walked the earth as long as Mithrandir had, gone in the space of a day.  It did not seem real.

Mithrandir spoke after a time, his voice old and rasping, barely able to be heard.

"They say it's on to Mordor next."

The noise of the Seanchan encampment drifted in on the evening breeze.

            For a moment longer, the three of them stood there, watching.  Perhaps they should have spoken, yet in the end, what was there to say?  That the Seanchan had displayed power beyond that which they had dreamed possible?  That they had eliminated a thousand-year-old threat in the space of a morning?

            At last, they stirred; it was Elrond who broke the silence between them.  He had been strangely unsettled, Aragorn realized dimly, since the Council yesterday, lacking his usual Elven calm, and now as he spoke, he seemed deeply troubled.  "They will not succeed against Mordor.  They—they _cannot succeed against Mordor."  _

            "Can they not?" asked Aragorn distantly, without turning from the vista in front of him; he barely knew he had spoken at all, and could not have sworn to what he said.

            Elrond did not respond.  Perhaps he had no answer.

            After another long moment, Mithrandir turned and left.  Elrond paused a moment, almost spoke, then broke off, shaking his head.  He turned as well, and went away into the depths of what remained of his home.  Only Aragorn remained, standing silently on the terrace, looking out below him.  In the distance, against the darkening sky, suddenly patterns of light began to dance, a shifting interplay of shimmering colors that blended and merged and fused on the backdrop of the low cloud-cover, many times more beautiful and elaborate than the most intricate fireworks he had seen.  _The Sky Lights, he remembered distantly, something that Suroth had said—it was a talent of the _damane,_ she had asserted.  The idea that the terrible __damane could be responsible for something like that--_

            He almost missed the step behind him.

            "Boromir."

            "It is I."

            The Man of Minas Tirith came up onto the stone pavilion, moving to stand beside Aragorn to look out over the Seanchan encampment as well.  There was a curious tension in his stride, a barely-suppressed excitement that Aragorn noticed, clinging to his form; a strange light that shone in his face and eyes.  He wrapped his hands around the stone rail almost eagerly, leaning forward as if he wished he were down among the Seanchan walking the pathways below, and looked out—not at Aragorn, but at the Sky Lights above them.

            "The Seanchan," he said softly, reverently.

            Aragorn turned to look at him; a flash of insight struck him.

            "Were you there, today?" he asked Boromir.

            "I was," Boromir said, and smiled out into the night.  "Captain of the Ground Forces Maekel Etari gave me a spot on the line with a company of pikemen."  Suddenly he smashed his fist into the rail. "Did you _see_ the destruction of Isengard?" he asked, turning to face Aragorn sharply.

            "I saw."

            "And next it's on to Mordor," Boromir continued, his eyes shining.  "Captain Etari said as much.  When we reach Mordor—"  He broke off there, as if overcome with emotion, and clenched his fist again.  Aragorn swallowed down unease. 

            "Boromir—"

            Boromir did not hear him.  "Maekel Etari told me they were strong," he continued, his eyes bright in the many-hued, reflected glow from the clouds.  "I did not realize how strong.  He is right.  They are right.  Mordor will not be able to stand against them."

            Aragorn was silent, looking out over the encampment.

            "Think--!"  Boromir insisted.  "Finally, the end for which we Men of Gondor have worked for centuries—the destruction of Mordor—will come to pass!  And afterward—"  He paused, looking out over the encampment.

            "Afterward?" Aragorn asked to be saying something.

            "Who knows.  Maekel Etari said—"  Boromir broke off.  It was as if he were considering something that he hesitated to speak.  "Captain of the Ground Forces Etari said that—that Seanchan could always use 'straight thinkers.'  They're going to be going the other way soon, crossing the Aryth Ocean.  After Mordor is gone—"

            At this Aragorn could no longer contain himself.  "You're not thinking of going with them?" he demanded, shocked, turning abruptly toward Boromir.

            "Why not?" Boromir rounded toward him too quickly.  "Why shouldn't I go back with the Seanchan?  Just to see what this place is like if for no other reason!  The Seanchan—"

            "The Seanchan are _arrogant and—"_

            "It's not arrogance!  They can do what they say.  They succeeded in destroying Isengard in _one day_ where those of us in Middle-Earth had not been able to succeed—"

            "Because we had not _tried to succeed—" _

            "Because we _knew we could _not_ succeed!"  Boromir almost shouted at him.  The two of them stared at each other in sudden, abrupt silence, Boromir breathing hard with the force of his emotions.   "No, the Seanchan are strong," he continued after a moment.  "They are __strong!  _So_ strong….  They will succeed.  They __will.  They will do what Gondor could not do—they will overthrow Mordor—defeat Sauron--"_

            "And what kind of a world will it be after they have done so?" Aragorn demanded.  "What world will the Seanchan leave us?  They know _nothing of this place, Boromir—nothing of our history, our peoples, our ways—they see the world only through their own eyes and do not even seek to look at it through others—"_

            Boromir shrugged impatiently.  "Does it matter?  They will be going back.  They said so themselves—they will be returning to Seanchan to go the other way, to prepare for the _Corenne, whatever that might be—"_

            "You _believe them when they say that?" Aragorn asked, stunned.  "Look!  Look at this—"  He swept one hand wide to take in all of Rivendell—the blocks of tent stretching off into the distance, the ditch lined with stakes surrounding the encampment, the newly erected message towers where _raken_-riders swept in and out at all hours of the day.  "Does this look like they will be returning afterward?  Does this look like nothing more than an encampment to you?"_

            "Who knows?" was Boromir's sullen response.  "I only know what I heard Maekel Etari, Captain of the Ground Forces, reply in response to my question.  He said that the Ever Victorious Army only came here in response to a—a Foretelling by one of the Empress's _soe'feia_ Truth-speakers, indicating a disaster to come.  He said that this land is to be a proving-ground for the Ever Victorious Army.  He said that the real battle is to come across the Aryth Ocean, on the other side of Seanchan, 'when they bring the name of Paendrag back to Paendrag's home' and every Seanchan soldier knows it.  They have no interest in this land at all, save as exactly that—a proving ground, and once they are done here, then they will return."

            Aragorn shook his head and turned away, unable to articulate his feelings.  After a moment he turned back.  "Very well.  Say that the Seanchan _do_ leave.  Then what?  What then?"

            "How do you mean?"

            "What kind of world will they leave behind them?  A world in which—"

            "A world in which Saruman and Sauron no longer exist, and that can only be be for the better!" Boromir insisted.

            "How?  Will the Shadow be dead then?  What of the One Ring?  The Orcs?  Will the Seanchan destroy them all?  If not, will they defend us from them—"

            Boromir snorted.  "I think that we are perfectly capable of defending ourselves against Orcs—"

            "Maybe against a united force of Orcs that stays within its confines, but against Orcish hordes, wandering leaderless throughout Middle-Earth?  At least, with Sauron they are all contained, not free to wander throughout the land wreaking destruction—"

            "Oh, so it is better for them to be united into a single fighting force that can easily be wielded to destroy us?  Because—"

            _"Enough!"  Aragorn cut Boromir off with a sharply upraised hand; he recognized that the debate had descended into pointless bickering.  He turned away again, staring out over the grounds of Rivendell—__Rivendell Garrison, High Lady Suroth had called it_._  Those words chilled him as he recalled them.  "Boromir," he said after a time, quietly, "these Seanchan frighten me."_

            They did.  They _did.  His voice ached with the naked honesty that only fear could bring to it; Aragorn knew that, and did not care enough to hide it.  They frightened him because they were so strong, because they seemed so heedless—because they were strong enough to _be_ that heedless.  And different—so different he could barely comprehend them._

            Because they brought change, and no known history, to a land where so much was dependent on history. 

            And without knowing their history, how could he hope to predict their future?  He could not.  It was unknowable, as unknowable as they were themselves. 

            He said it again, "They frighten me."

            Boromir looked at him.  Their eyes met.

            The man of Gondor replied coolly, "They don't frighten me."  And with those words, Boromir turned and was gone. 

How long Aragorn remained alone on that terrace, the last of the Dunedain did not know; he sat, still, and stared out into the rapidly lowering night.  Images from that day and yesterday flickered through his mind; the awful battle, the destruction of Isengard, the council scene—while the weird and shifting Sky Lights played over all.

What finally made him turn was a half-heard rustle behind him; it was low, almost at the edge of hearing, but his Ranger reflexes took over and he had turned ever so slightly into a defensive stance, dropping one hand on his sword hilt, before he knew what had happened.  

Behind him were the hobbits.

Frodo, Samwise, Merry and Pippin in a body; he recognized them at once and straightened.  He released his sword with a trace of guilt as he realized he had not thought about them since the council yesterday, and not much the day before; the Seanchan—these strange, strange Seanchan—had taken so much of his time and attention that he had not much to spare for anything else.  It was due to that guilt that he spoke gentler than he might have.  "Yes?  What is it?" he asked.

 "Aragorn, please, you have to help us."

It was Frodo who spoke first as well it might have been.  As Aragorn looked at the little hobbit more closely, he saw that Frodo was in deep distress; though he appeared physically unharmed, he was pale and sweating and his blue eyes were wide in his face.  The other hobbits clustered around him were watching him with strange expressions of mingled dread and something that looked like relief; Aragorn could not tell.

"What's wrong?" he asked gravely, struck by the urgency in the young hobbit's tone.

"It's—it's that _sul'dam_, Eilei Katrell," Frodo said now, stepping forward, and even before he continued his sentence, Aragorn guessed what he was going to say from the distress in his voice.  The little hobbit raised his eyes to Aragorn's face, and he could see the blind panic in them.  "You have to help us, Aragorn—we—there's nobody else to turn to—she—"

_"What did she do?"_ Aragorn demanded though he knew the answer.

Frodo broke off and covered his face with his hands; it was Samwise who stepped forward now to take over for his master.  "Took the ring, sir," he said, and even through Aragorn's rising shock he heard Samwise's tone of voice was strangely flat.  "That Seanchan woman with a pack of those others like her, each one of them leading those chained slave-women came upon us.  They—"

"They demanded the surrender of the Ring!" cried Pippin, starting up.  "They claimed that under the laws of the—of the Crystal Throne of Seanchan, that they were entitled to take possession of all—of all _ter'angreal_, and when Master Frodo said that we didn't have any _ter'angreal_, that we didn't even know what _ter'angreal_ was, she just smiled and said it was the Ring that he carried around his neck—"

 "She demanded possession of the Ring?" Aragorn replied, stunned; he did not believe it, though he knew he should.

"She did, sir," Merry affirmed, "and when Master Frodo would not give it to her—"

"She took it," Frodo finished, looking up in obvious distress, staring at Aragorn desperately.  "She did something—I don't know what—the air around me suddenly became as hard as stone and I could not move, and she just reached out and—she took it.  She lifted the Ring from around my neck and just—You have to help me get it back," he implored.  "You have to help me get my—the—Ring back-- "

"What did she think she was going to do with it?" Aragorn demanded incredulously, stunned more by the Seanchan's audacity than by the actual deed.  "What on earth did she think she was going to do with it?"

"She'll keep it for herself, I'm sure," Frodo replied bitterly.   "She doesn't believe it has any power, you know she doesn't, and she certainly will see no need to destroy it—"

"Now, Master Frodo," Sam interrupted cautiously, "that's not necessarily entirely true.  She did say she intended to destroy it, and maybe—well, I know that she shouldn't have taken it in that way, but I will say I'm glad to be rid of it, and if that Seanchan der'whatsis can actually do what she says—"

Aragorn cut them both off.  "Never mind.  Where is she now?" he demanded.

"She's where we were, sir, on the north terrace, her and her strange chained women," Sam answered, "but if you—"

"Thank you, Sam.  You did the right thing, Frodo, by telling me of this," he confided to Frodo, who simply nodded miserably.  "You stay here.  I'll go and retrieve this Ring."

The stairs to the North Terrace were many; Aragorn took them at a run.  There was no doubt in his mind what had happened:  the Seanchan _der'sul'dam_ had been caught by the Ring and had taken it in that fashion.  _These Seanchan,_ he thought grimly, _must be very susceptible to the lure of power, for her to be caught so quickly, and without having touched the Ring at all._  And the idea of the Enemy being able to control, through the Ring, the sort of power that the Seanchan had displayed today--  The though spurred him on to greater speed.  What he could do against the _damane,_ he did not know, but he knew he had to try.

He crested the final stair step and stumbled at once to a halt, staring at the scene before him.  Eilei Katrell looked up and greeted him with a smile.

"Welcome—you are Aragorn, are you not?  You are just in time to bear witness to the destruction of this menace."

The Ring lay on a small round table, in the exact center of the stone flooring of the terrace.   Nobody was touching it, he saw, not even Eilei Katrell.  Instead, around it stood a circle of the chained women—_damane_ and _sul'dam_, he thought distantly, the _damane_ in front and the _sul'dam_ behind.  He disregarded it and accused her, "You took the Ring from Frodo—"

"I did indeed," she said calmly.  "The Ring is a _ter'angreal_, and under Seanchan law—"

"—all _ter'angreal_ are the property of the Crystal Throne," he finished for her bitterly.

"Indeed."

"You had no right to it," he continued angrily.  "He did not give it to you willingly, he—"

"Of course he did not," she said, and then he was astonished to see her sigh and lower her head.  "Such is often the way with _ter'angreal_ that have an effect on the mind.  Even though the holder knows that the object is harmful he or she cannot let go of it.  Even if it is their death they cannot.  They _cannot."_  She sighed again.  "I regret that it had to be done that way," she said sincerely, "but the _ter'angreal_ had gripped his mind.   No lasting harm should come to him," she added, almost as if she were reassuring him.  "He was indeed greatly distressed; but the pain caused him by separation from the _ter'angreal_ should diminish with time and there should be no long-lasting physical effects; he did not, from what I understand, hold it that long.  He may even come to understand in time that it was for the best; his friends seemed at least half-minded that way.  Even if they did not, though, come, Aragorn."  She looked up at him.  "I can see in your face that you know he had no business with that ring.  It was too much for him, and you know it too."

Aragorn looked away, cursing.  He did know it, and had; but paradoxically, the fact that it was too much for him made Frodo the only person who could carry it.  Aragorn had known that the burden of the Ring was his to accept, but that knowledge froze him.  How did he dare to accept it, knowing what could happen if he did?  What could happen if the Ring turned him and he fell under the Enemy's sway?   The Nazgul had been Men once too, before the gift of the Nine.  No, he had thought, the Ring was not meant for his hand, nor the hand of any man's.

            But it was not in a man's hand that it now rested.  It was on a small stone table in the middle of a terrace, surrounded by women who meant to be its destruction.

            "Do you actually think you can destroy it?" he said now, his words just shy of scorn.

            "We do not _think_ we can," spoke one of the other women now.  "We _know_ that we can."

            "You know nothing," he said bitterly.

            Eilei raised an eyebrow.  "We know a great deal.  More than you might think," she said.  "Do you see these _damane_ here?"  She did not wait for his nod, which was as well; it was not forthcoming.  Aragorn watched her stonily.  "The _damane_ we have gathered in this place are _damane_ who have very good strength in Earth and are skilled in working with metals. They have been examining this _ter'angreal_ since it was taken, looking at the flows of Earth that make it up.  They have examined the weaving of the flows, how they are bound and how they are joined, and we are almost ready to begin unpicking the weave."

            Aragorn stared at her.  Her words washed over him, more words that he did not understand—_flows of Earth, unpicking the weave_, these things had nothing to do with the One Ring.  How she could be so blind, he did not know.  He said as much.

            "Do you think it will be that easy?  Do you think these things you think of have _anything_ to do with the One Ring?" he demanded.  "This is a Ring of Power—it is _the_ Ring of Power, forged by the Enemy in guile and treachery for the purpose of bringing the other Rings under his control, and through the other Rings the peoples of Middle-Earth, _and you don't understand this!_  Have you not heard?"  He recited, achingly, desperate to make her see,

_"Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky_

_Seven for the Dwarf-Lords in their halls of stone_

_Nine for mortal Men, doomed to die_

_One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne_

_In the land of Mordor where the Shadows lie_

_One Ring to rule them all, one ring to find them_

_One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them_

_In the land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."_   

"That is what this Ring is," he said intensely, desperately, trying to drive the words into her brain by force of will as he stared at her.  "This is not some Seanchan _ter—ter—ter'angreal,"_ he said, stumbling over the unfamiliar word; he still did not know what it meant, though it did not matter.  "This is a _weapon,_ a terrible, awful weapon created by a dark hand for the purpose of destroying and enslaving the peoples of Middle-Earth, it is the most powerful and terrifying creation in the history of Arda!  You don't—"

            "I don't see how it matters," Eilei said, shrugging.  Several of the other _sul'dam_ behind her nodded and voiced their assent.  "Whether it was made a hundred thousand years ago or yesterday; whether it was made by one hand or many, for the purposes of good or ill, is of no importance for _our _purpose.  For our purpose, why it was made doesn't matter, only _how._  It is made up of flows of Earth twined with Air and Spirit, and as such, it is fully within our power to unravel.  Had we tried this, instead of balefire, the ring would already have been destroyed."

            "No," he protested but weakly.  "No.  You don't know—what it can do—"

            "And you do not know what we can do.  You may watch, if you wish."

            Eilei turned from the barbarian man who watched back to her company of _damane_.  He had pled strongly, but in the end in vain; Eilei knew what she was doing.  She had been studying _ter'angreal_ since before she had been made full _sul'dam_.

            She gave the word to her _sul'dam_, and they in turn commanded their _damane,_ gently or harshly as their nature warranted.  The _damane_ embraced _saidar._  Alivia too, her favored _damane_, embraced it; she felt the sharp, sweet bliss that pierced Alivia's heart at its touch, through the bracelet.  That was what the _a'dam_ did, among other things; it allowed the _sul'dam_ to know what the _damane_ felt.

            Sometimes she thought she could almost see the glow of _saidar_ around her _damane _when they were holding it, although that, of course, was impossible.  She had been tested, not just with bracelet and _damane_ but with collar and _sul'dam_, every year until she had reached her twenty-fifth birthday, and had passed by failing every time; it was known that _damane _could often be found passing for _sul'dam_, so _sul'dam_, especially young ones, were carefully monitored.  No, she knew she was no _damane_, and would never know the touch of _saidar_.  Sometimes, though, in the depths of her heart, she had wondered what it must be like to feel it for herself, rather than at second hand, and had even—privately, very privately, and no more than once or twice in her whole life—yearned for the sensation.   Such yearnings of course she would confide to no one.  

            She spoke again.  "_Sul'dam_, have your _damane_ begin to unpick the weaves."

            "Yes, _der'sul'dam!_" the assembled company responded.

            There was nothing dramatic to see as they began this task; simply twenty _damane_ staring at the _ter'angreal,_ each with her _sul'dam_ staring at her.  This unpicking of the weave had the potential to be a dangerous task; should a _damane_ drop one of the strands of the One Power at which she was tugging, the results were unpredictable, and might be harmful—which was why Eilei had taken the precaution of having them perform it outside, at a distance from the house and in a place that could be easily shielded, should it become necessary.  As she thought of the danger, she turned to the barbarian male who stood beside her, watching as if he could not take his eyes from the Ring, and told him, "You might want to stand back a little way; this is not an easy thing to do, and may even be harmful."

            "It will not succeed," he said desperately, and repeated, "You don't understand what you're dealing with here."

            "Neither do you," she pointed out as Alivia tugged at the strands with the delicacy of someone handling live and venomous snakes.  She was beginning to feel strain; Eilei could sense it through the bracelet.  She asked, "Alivia, are you well?"

            "Yes, _der'sul'dam,_ it is simply….this weave is more complex than it looked at first.  It is a little difficult."

            Eilei said nothing more.  As difficult as it might have been, this could not be stopped once it had been started; she could do nothing to aid her _damane,_ only watch.  It was the paradox of the _sul'dam_; they were the most powerful women in the Empire, always excepting, of course, the Empress and her family (may she live forever), yet their power did not reside in themselves and could not be used by them.  Only by the _damane_ whom they had learned to control. 

            The barbarian man said nothing, watching the _damane_ and their _sul'dam_ as they stared at the ring.  Eilei watched as well, looking at the gleaming circle of metal before her.  She felt if she stared hard enough that she could almost see the flows, glistening strands of Earth and Air and Spirit; Earth for the metal body of the ring, Air and Spirit for its effects on the mind.  Air, Water and Spirit were the powers used in Compulsion.  Compulsion, at least, was known here, she mused, as her thoughts turned to the channeling man that High Lady Suroth had executed.  Such a strange land….they knew how to do things, but not, it seemed, what they were doing….Earth and Air were natural opposites; yet, when opposites were forced to join in unison, works of great power could be created—was it not so with _saidar_ and _saidin?_  But these were idle thoughts; her mind wandered as her _damane_ worked.

            She might have shared some of these things with the barbarian man who stood by her side, simply to pass the time, but a glance at his face and she guessed he would probably not appreciate it; his features were drawn and tense, and his lips moved in what looked like silent prayer as he stared at the ring and the circle of _sul'dam_ and _damane._  _You don't know what you do,_ he seemed to be saying, over and over again; Eilei shrugged internally. Perhaps—just perhaps—he was not entirely wrong, but at the same time, _he _did not know what the _sul'dam _and _damane _could do.  The ring was beginning to glow faintly now as the _damane_ tore at the fibers of its being, giving off a faint light; were it sentient, she guessed, it would be screaming.   

            The first tinge of unease came to her through her _damane_, forewarning her.  "Alivia?" she asked, looking sharply at the Leashed One.

            Nor was she the only one, she saw; _sul'dam_ were shifting, fidgeting, turning their attention on the women at the other end of their leashes, asking if they were right or well.  Eilei asked again.  "Alivia, is something wrong?"

            She knew by the strained expression her _damane_ turned to her that something was indeed wrong, and was swift enough to guess what it was.  "Mistress, it is the _damane_ Riete," Alivia said, her voice quick with fear, and indicated the woman across the circle with a gesture; Riete, a little brown-haired _damane_ with a heart-shaped face and wide blue eyes, was pale and sweating with stress.  Her _sul'dam_, Sumi Bitrou, was looking at her with alarm that was rapidly deepening into something close to open panic.   

            "The _damane_ Riete?" she repeated, looking at Alivia with concern.

            "Yes, Mistress.  She—Riete—"  Alivia swallowed and looked back at the ring.  Eilei muttered a curse.

            "Sumi.  What is wrong?"

            Sumi, a plump, red-haired _sul'dam_, answered, her pale complexion paling still further.  "_Der'sul'dam,_ Riete—she cannot hold onto the thread she has drawn.  Not for much longer."

            "_What?_" 

            She noticed peripherally that the barbarian man had started up from his silent contemplations and was watching them closely—though he did not and could not know precisely what was transpiring, there was enough alarm in Sumi's voice to attract attention—but she spared him not a thought.  "_Sul'dam_ Bitrou, you must _force_ her to—"

            "It will do no good, _Der'sul'dam,_" Sumi replied anxiously.  "You—the weave was a great deal more complex than we had thought at first.  The threads are deeply intertwined and have grown slick very, very quickly."  And indeed, Eilei had only to look at Alivia, to turn her attention to the knot of sensations in her head that spoke Alivia's name, to know the truth of this. 

            "What are you saying?" Eilei demanded sharply.  Fear brushed her heart.  She pushed it back and down into a confined space where it could be controlled; she could not allow it to interfere with her now.

            She knew what Sumi was going to say though; she knew it by the look on her face, and she could tell, from the sharp, quick movements and tense air of the other _sul'dam_ that they knew as well.  _A mistake to use Riete,_ the words were going through her head, so distantly that she barely knew they were there.  _A mistake.  Too young, too inexperienced.  Her great strength in Earth cannot make up for that—_

             It was Riete who answered her question, and at a less urgent time the _damane's_ boldness would have stunned her; now, she barely noticed.  "_Der'sul'dam_ Katrell," Riete said, her face white as a sheet, sweat running down its sides, "my most abject apologies, but I am going to drop the weave."

            _Der'sul'dam_ Katrell's voice hardened.  She responded at once.  Aragorn, watching, who did not know what _dropping the weave_ meant, nevertheless grasped instantly that it was a matter of great consequence by the electric air that swept the room at this statement.   _Something has gone wrong,_ he realized with inward dread and a sick sense of both despair and foreknowledge.  _I knew it, I_ knew_ these Seanchan were asking for trouble--_

            "Hands," the _der'sul'dam_ said sharply, cutting off his thoughts.  "How many _damane_ besides Riete are holding threads at this moment?"

            Four of the approximately twenty _sul'dam _in the room raised their unbraceleted hands, Aragorn saw; even at such a desperate moment the _damane_ did not speak for themselves.  Katrell's chalky complexion paled still further, but she set her shoulders and nodded.

            "Tuli, Gita, Miren, and Denna.  Could be worse.  _Sul'dam_ Li, Chou, Arra and Songi, have your _damane_ extract their threads at this moment.  _Soonest!_"  Riete watched, he saw, pale and sweating, her lip bleeding from where she was biting it.  Her _sul'dam_, Bitrou, was no less pale; she reached out and stroked the head of her _damane _in what was probably meant to be a gesture of reassurance.

"Already done, _Der'Sul'dam_," one of the other _sul'dam_ said, a tall but fragile-looking woman with long blonde ringlets.  The other three chorused their agreements.

"What is going on?" Aragorn demanded, turning to _Der'Sul'dam_ Katrell.  "Is there some danger?"

"Not now," the _der'sul'dam_ said harshly.  She turned back to Riete and Bitrou.  "_Sul'dam_ Bitrou, _damane_ Riete, I am sorry," she said quietly.

The _damane_ was weeping but the _sul'dam_ smiled bravely.  "It's all right, _Der'Sul'dam_," she said with a hollow confidence.  "I'll stay with the _damane_—"

"You have no choice; you must or she cannot channel to hold the thread," the _der'sul'dam_ said.

"I know.  I'd do it anyway.  She's a good _damane_, Riete is," Sumi said, forcing another smile.  "Maybe it will be all right."

"I hope so," Katrell responded with feeling.  "For both your sakes.  How much longer?"

"Maybe a minute or two," Sumi responded.

"All right.  The rest of you—Down the stairs, _now!_  You too, barbarian," she commanded, bringing her _damane_ to her feet with a single jerk on the leash.  "Get as far away as you can—down the stairs and around the corner should be all right."  Katrell was moving as she spoke, and the rest of the _sul'dam_ were not slow to follow suit, dragging their _damane_ behind them; the assembled group surged to the top of the terrace steps.  "Once there, duck to the ground and stay there until I give the all-clear—"

"Shield of Air?" one of the _sul'dam_ asked. 

"Yes, but quickly; I want no _damane_ to be holding the Source when Riete drops the thread." 

"What's going on?" Aragorn demanded again, cold with fear as Eilei shoved him toward the door.  "What's happening—"

"Riete's about to drop the thread," Eilei explained in a hard, quick undertone; _sul'dam_ and _damane_ were pouring over the lip of the terrace stairs already and Eilei drew him after them, speaking in short, clear words made shorter by urgency. "When you unpick a weave, the threads of power are hard to hold, but you must; if you drop one before it's all the way out, the weave will collapse into a new form at random.  Sometimes, if you are lucky, the new form is harmless; a flash of light, a puff of wind, a mild heat or cold—"  They were hurrying down the stairs now, jostled on all sides by _sul'dam_ who were dragging the _damane_ after them, urging them on, exhorting them to move faster; Eilei's words were broken and chopped by the hurried rhythm of her feet on the steps.  "If you are not lucky—I saw a palace leveled that way once, and ten _damane_ burned out.  We had to put them down.  The more intricate the weave, the greater the effects—I should never have picked Riete for this, she's too young, but she's our second strongest in Earth and I thought it wouldn't matter—"  She broke off and raised her voice to shout to the rest of the company.  "Thirty seconds!  There's the corner!  As soon as you get around it, remember, to the ground!  _Damane_ in front, _sul'dam_ behind!  Protect your _sul'dam_, _damane_—while you're joined, your _sul'dam_ is your life; if she dies, you die at the same instant!"

"You Seanchan are insane!" Aragorn almost shouted at her.  "You meddle with things you do not understand—" He himself had understood little of what she had said except that she had seen a palace destroyed, but righteous anger surged in him like the tide.  "Elrond _told_ you the Ring could not be destroyed in any but the fires of Mount Doom!  The Enemy—Sauron will extract a _terrible_ vengeance—"  His words broke off, choked by his anger, his dread and his stunned disbelief at Seanchan recklessness.

"Has nothing to do with your Enemy, superstitious barbarian," Eilei panted.  "Your failure to understand _us_ won't make it so either.  It's _my_ fault.  If I hadn't chosen Riete—but I thought she could handle it—All right!  Around the corner, Shield  and drop!" she shouted as they came off the end of the stairs.  Most of the _sul'dam_ and _damane_ were already around the corner at that time, but Aragorn stopped, possessed by a mad impulse.  He turned and looked back, up the stairs, to where Riete and Sumi could be seen as silhouetted shapes at the top of the terrace.  In the fraction of the second that he watched before Eilei yanked him to the ground, he clearly—_clearly_—saw Sumi reach, put her hands to Riete's neck, and come away with the collar.  Freeing her.  He had just time to note this before a shimmering layer fell into place between him and the _sul'dam_ and _damane_ he watched; he recognized the effect from the battle that morning as a Shielding effect, and knew that the _damane_ had woven a shield around the terrace.  Then hands grabbed him from behind—Eilei's hands, most likely—and he was pulled to the ground. 

"Stay down!"

He ducked to the ground as the explosion came.

He did not hear it; the Shield of Air blocked sound.  Nor did he see it right away; his head was down.  But he felt it, a deep shuddering that ran through the ground and up his knees, and when he ventured to raise his head and peer around the corner, he saw the area behind the Shield—the area that had been the north terrace--was a roiling mass of black smoke and red-orange flames.  The rest of the _damane_ and their _sul'dam_ were raising their heads after the first moment had passed, staring in awe at the fire contained and crushed back on itself by the shield with which the _damane_ had surrounded the terrace.  It looked strange; the top of the terrace was a black column of roiling smoke, and yet around it the sky was the twilight purple of evening, the dusk birds twittered and sang, the stars looked on from above.  Except for the shuddering that had come at the moment of explosion, there was no sign to tell in the outer world that anything out of the ordinary had happened.  

They watched in silence.  It was obvious that neither Sumi nor Riete could be alive in that; yet still the company stood, moment by moment, watching as the smoke wafted down, clearing; the terrace began to be visible through the cloud.

At last with a gesture, Eilei called, "Shield of Air!  Drop it!"

The air shimmered again, and then the smoke began to drift away, freed from its confines.  Aragorn caught the scent of burning and his eyes stung and watered as the smoke reached him.  The _sul'dam_ as well, perhaps; their eyes looked overbright to him.

"Sumi could not still be alive," one of them said quietly.

"No.  Nor Riete," Eilei concurred, her face grave.  "She was a good _damane._  She will be missed.  Air!  Channel Air, and get rid of some of that smoke."

Aragorn did not know what Eilei meant by that command, but he soon saw the effects; the smoke, spreading out across the night, began suddenly to rise as if caught in a chimney, thin gray strands dancing and threading together against the purpling dusk as they climbed high into the sky.  The _sul'dam _and _damane _watched without speaking as the pillar of smoke ascended and the top of the terrace cleard.  Eilei waited a moment, then said, "Come on.  Carefully; do not draw upon _saidar_ once at the top of the terrace.  We have no idea what lingering effects might remain."

Slowly, pair by pair, the _damane_ and their _sul'dam_ ascended the stairs to the North Terrace.  There was no talking.  The faces of the _sul'dam_ were all downcast and grave; those of the _damane_, worried.  The _damane_ stayed close to their mistresses, and preceded them, as well they might.  If the _sul'dam_ died, the _damane_ died as well.

The top of the North Terrace was a very small wasteland.  The cool, carved marble stones were cracked and blackened, stained with soot and ash; the little table on which the Ring had rested was no more.  Fragments and chips of stone lay scattered across the top of the terrace, attesting to the table's remains.  Of the _damane_ and the _sul'dam_, nothing remained but two mounds of ash, along with a shining silver collar and bracelet; Eilei Katrell prodded it with a foot and then bent to pick it up.  "Riete's _a'dam_.  She was a good _damane_."

Aragorn said nothing; he had bent to the debris in the exact center of the terrace and was sorting through the ash, stone chips and wreckage, his face set in grim lines.  He knew what he was looking for.  Not even an explosion such as that could have damaged the Ring, the One Ring, of this he was sure; and if these Seanchan thought otherwise, they were in for a surprise.

Or not.

A _sul'dam_ knelt beside him, folding her blue-and-red skirts beneath her knees, while her _damane_ hung back at the edge of the leash.  She spoke not a word to him, bending to her task with a visage no less stern than his own, until she turned over a sizeable chunk of stone carved in the shape of a cracked, delicate leaf and came away with something. 

"This is it."

A circle, a bent and twisted circle no thicker than the width of yarn or twine, and the color of gray ash or soot.  Eilei came and knelt beside the _sul'dam_, looking at her _damane_.__

"Alivia?"

The _damane_ frowned a moment, then glanced at her mistress and shook her head.  "Nothing."

Gently, Eilei reached out and took it from the other _sul'dam_'s hand.  She held it delicately between thumb and forefinger, and then placed it in her palm and offered it to Aragorn.  Dreamlike, he took it; it felt as fragile and brittle as a dry twig in his fingers, and when he squeezed it, what had once been metal fell into ash before his eyes.

"It….is destroyed," he said, unable to believe it.  "It is destroyed.  The One Ring—" he _still_ could not believe it, though he saw it with his own eyes "—is destroyed.  It—"

Eilei bowed her head for a moment, closing her eyes.  "Worth the cost," she murmured, her voice part assertion, part fervent prayer.  

"More," added the other _sul'dam_, that same fervent tone in her voice; but  Aragorn could almost hear the words that followed, or infer them from the stony, alien stares the company of _sul'dam_ turned in his direction.  _More than worth the cost.  This had better have been more than worth the cost._  He heard, but he could not answer, as he stared at the pile of loose gray ash that until a few moments ago had been the biggest threat that Middle-Earth had faced.  And as he sat so, amid a blackened, broken terrace, surrounded by Seanchan _sul'dam_ and _damane_, as the sounds of the Seanchan camp drifted around them on the breeze—as he sat there, and contemplated the Seanchan destruction of Isengard, the Seanchan execution of Saruman, and the upcoming expedition against Mordor, he found himself thinking the same thing, though for very different reason.

_Was this worth the cost?_

He realized that he could not answer.


	8. Briande's Story

The sun had gone down, and the moon was beginning its ascent into the sky by the time Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ Briande managed to escape from her round of meetings, first with High Lady Suroth and then with the _der'morats_ of the various Talons underneath her.  Keille had gone off somewhere, probably visiting Ajan Idwalle, so Briande was more or less free.  After another session of chewing out Lana and Sheilene—for crash-diving _again;_ Briande was almost out of ideas as to what to do with those two and it was all Lana's fault; Sheilene was nowhere near as adventuresome, nor as ready to risk her _raken_—she waited until the two young _morats_ had filed from her tent, then with a heavy sigh picked up her insectile helmet and rose.

She knew where she was going as she stepped out of her tent and into the muddy, churned-up lanes that divided the tent-blocks of the Seanchan encampment.  Of course she did; every Seanchan military encampment was laid out in the same fashion from one location to the next.  This camp would be the same in every respect as a camp on the other side of the world in N'Kon province, back in Seanchan.  Yes, she knew the encampment all right.  And more; as she crossed the boundary of the camp and stepped onto the clear, green ground of Imladris, she was both reassured and disconcerted to find that she remembered Imladris almost as well, even after five hundred years.  But she had not recalled it as being so _small_, that was the thing, and as she wound her way down the white-stone path to the terrace where she had told Elrond she would meet him, she was surprised to find herself faintly saddened by this seeming change.

_Elrond._  Briande sighed again to herself at the thought, swinging her helmet idly by its straps as she passed underneath the shadow of ancient trees, in between low and blooming flower bushes that sent sweet fragrance through the air and perfumed the night breeze; the irrelevant thought that Keille would scold her if she saw her treating her equipment in such a careless fashion surfaced briefly and was then dismissed.  The little _morat_ was one of over a dozen backriders she had had in the years since she became _der'morat_, and without doubt, one of the ones most concerned about equipment.

Briande had known, when she had first taken the mission, that there would be a better-than-even chance that she and her husband would meet in Middle-Earth; she remembered how Elrond had always striven to hold Imladris ready as a bastion of resistance against Sauron in the time after the Last Alliance.  He had spoken to her on more than one occasion about his fear that the One Ring would someday resurface and engulf Middle-Earth in flames.  Having heard that, and knowing who the Enemy that the Empress's _soe'feia_ Neferi had seen must be, it was a logical conclusion that if Elrond still lived, he would be in the forefront of the struggle against Mordor, and that the Ever Victorious Army would have to deal with him sooner or later.  That knowledge had caused Briande more than a little discomfort, but she had not considered even for a moment turning down the Empress's offer of this position.  After all, the road to the Westlands—the road to the _Hailene_—lay through Middle-Earth, and she would have gone to Shayol Ghul itself—to _Barad-Dur_ itself—for an opportunity to go with the _Hailene._  She had known this was coming, but that did not make it any easier.

The gardens she passed through as she followed the white-stone path were new, and it occurred to her as she stopped briefly to smell a rose that Arwen must have created them—must have, because for all her former husband's many virtues, gardening was not among them, and she knew that the twins also did not garden.  No, these were her daughter's gardens; she could see Arwen's hand and heart in the artfully artless placement of plants, the gentle sweeping curves of the path, the shadows of the tree branches in the moonlight.  _Arwen,_ Briande mused to herself as her boots clicked on the smooth stones and her helmet swung crazily from her hand, in and out of shadow as she moved beneath the trees.  She needed to speak to Elrond about two things, and Arwen would be the easier one—certainly the simpler one to explain.

Elrond was waiting for her on the high terrace when she climbed the last step, wrapped in shadow and moonlight; he rose as she approached and faced her.  For a moment, neither of them said anything; they both simply stood still, looking at one another.   Her husband seemed much the same as he had been when she had taken her leave of him five hundred years ago; clear gray eyes, long dark hair, pale with even, regular features.  He had not changed at all, she realized, and felt suddenly weary.  She had changed.  She had changed and he had remained the same.

After a time, she spoke.  "Elrond," she said quietly, looking at him.  His expression did not change, but she saw that his eyes lit with hopefulness.

"Cele—Briande—"  He faltered, and fell silent.

She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together.  The mere _sound_ of her _da'covale_ name felt like a blow, cut her like whipscoring; had _anyone_ else attempted to call her—that—name—she would have drawn her sword and challenged the unfortunate one then and there.  Anyone else.

She drew a short breath through her teeth, then forced herself to speak.  "If you wish….you may call me….Celebrian."  She almost choked on the last word; even as she spoke, she knew that he would never understand just how great a liberty she was granting him.

And he smiled, she saw as she spoke; she was vaguely incredulous even as she saw it, that he could be so unaware of the favor she did him, of what it meant to a Seanchan.  "Celebrian," he said, his voice as soft as the wind in the leaves of the Sen T'jore, and she dug her nails into her palms to avoid the inevitable flinch.  "I….I missed you."

Briande was silent.

He came toward her and offered to embrace her, watching her as carefully as a _damane_ watches a _sul'dam_ for the slightest hint of rejection.  She hesitated a moment, then with an inward sigh permitted it, and he put his arms around her, clasping her so tightly she found it difficult to breathe.  He buried his face in her shoulder, and she could feel him trembling minutely against her.  "You came back," he murmured softly.  "After all these years….you came back…."

Briande said nothing, but stroked his long dark hair absently.  A fragment of dim memory from her previous life resurfaced, and she recalled that she had liked to tease him by playing with it, under the sheltering trees of Lothlorien, her mother Galadriel's enclave….the land where they had first met.  The memory surfaced briefly, carrying with it a faded wisp of warmth, then was gone just as quickly, leaving only that bone-deep weariness in its wake.

After a time he released her and stepped back, saying nothing but drinking her in with his eyes, looking at her as if he would never be able to stop.  Briande supposed she should have felt warmth or joy at such a regard, but instead it only made her feel uncomfortable.

Elrond seemed to see her unease and looked troubled.  Briande simply remained silent for the time being, attempting to formulate a beginning for the conversation she had come here to have with him; she allowed her….husband….to fill the odd pocket of quiet between them.  "Come," he said awkwardly, gesturing to a stone bench against the low railings of the terrace.  "Will….will you sit down?  This bench is the best place to view the gardens from, and from this angle you cannot see the Seanchan encampment," he offered, looking at her almost shyly.

"Are the gardens new?" Briande asked for the sake of making conversation, taking a seat on the stone bench; and indeed he was right, she saw, for from this angle the Seanchan encampment was behind them, out of their line of sight.  If one closed one's ears, it might even have been possible to pretend that the encampment did not exist.

Elrond moved to sit beside her, looking at her hopefully; Briande turned away a little and placed the Seanchan helmet that still dangled from her fingers on the bench between them.  He saw this and dropped his eyes.  After a moment, however, he rallied and went on.  "Yes, Arwen created these gardens three hundred years ago.  She is quite proud of them."

"She is right to be," Briande murmured, looking out over the elegant beds and banks of flowers, the graceful, arching trees, the splashing fountains; for a moment memory stirred again and she fancied that she could almost see her daughter's placid temperament in the form and sweep of the land, accentuated by the careful placement of flowers and shrubs.  Then it was buried by a stronger memory.  _Three hundred years…._  While her daughter had been delicately creating these gardens, Briande had been learning, first with bad grace, then with better, to be a _to'raken_ stable _da'covale,_  mucking out stalls, changing the nesting boxes, collapsing onto her filthy pallet every night too exhausted to even dream.  She gave a small sigh.  It had not been easy.

But in the end, it had all been worth it.

_Arwen._

It could no longer be put off.  Briande drew a deep breath and turned to Elrond.  "There is something I must discuss with you."

At the words, Elrond felt his heart grow cold within him.  He knew what she was going to say.  How he knew, he was not sure, but he knew.  "Celebrian," he began, having not the slightest idea what he was going to say, only knowing, somehow, that he had to try and forestall the inevitable.

He failed.

"Elrond, there are two reasons why I agreed to meet with you tonight.  I knew only of one when last I spoke to you, but since then another one has been added.  I—"

"Celebrian, please," he began, raising a hand, desperate to silence her for one more moment.

"No, Elrond, this has to be said.  I wish to say this first to make it completely clear:  I may have returned to Middle-Earth, at least for the space of time the Ever Victorious Army is here, but….Five hundred years have passed.  I have done much and seen much.   Too much.  I am changed, Elrond, and I cannot return to what I was.  You call me Celebrian, but I am not.  Not anymore.  Celebrian died three hundred years ago.  There is only Briande now.  So if you had been hoping that I would return to you, that we could take up our marriage where we had left off, as if nothing had happened since then, I must tell you that hope is vain.  I am not your wife anymore," she said, her voice quiet yet absolutely firm, "and I will not be ever again.  I am sorry."

He had expected this—in some deep, haunted part of his mind—but her words still struck him like a blow to the gut.  He almost gasped, literally feeling the air rush from his lungs with a blow.  He stared at her, searching her face, looking for some indication that she felt _pain_ at what she was saying, at least, pain to match what she had dealt him, but there was nothing; her face—the face that he had carried with him in his heart for every day of the past five hundred years—was distant and unapproachable in the moonlight.  If anything, she looked the way she had looked when her favorite horse had stumbled and broken its leg beyond all repair, just before the mare had been put out of its misery.

"But—" he made himself say, struggling to keep the beseeching tone from his voice, "but….why?  Celebrian, I….I still love you.  I have waited—for so long—"

"I'm sorry, but that's your misfortune," she said at once.  There was no malice in her voice, no ire; it was a simple statement of fact.

"But—you must feel _something_ for me.  Love cannot die—"

"I'm sorry but it did," she said, her voice quiet and yet firm, as unyielding in its own way as granite.

"I—I will change if you wish," he said, aware in that moment that he was pleading, pleading in a way he would never allow himself to with anyone else—she was his _wife._  "Tell me—" He broke off.  "Tell me how to change, and I—"

"No, I don't think you can," she said calmly, looking at him with a cool, evaluative stare.  "It's not in you.  And if you did change, it still would not be enough; more than likely, you would change in a direction that led you apart from me.  Our roads have diverged, Elrond, and they cannot be brought back together again.  Too much has happened to separate us.  Accept it."

Elrond started to speak, then stopped as he realized that he could not trust his voice.  He averted his face, staring instead at the timeless blocks of stone that made up the floor of the terrace, running his eyes along the cracks between the stones.  Behind him, he heard the gentle scrape of Celebrian's Seanchan helmet against the bench as she moved slightly.  He dared not look back at her, lest the sight of her overwhelm his fragile self-mastery.  After a time, speaking with iron control, he said, "Celebrian, I don't understand.  It has only been five hundred years.  What could have happened to—What happened?"

His wife was silent for a long, long time as if thinking.  "More than you could imagine," she said at last.   "But that is unimportant at present.  The important thing is that you understand—"

"I _don't_ understand."  He cursed inwardly, knowing he sounded weak, almost petulant, but unable to help himself.  "Celebrian, please.  Tell me what happened.  I don't—I can't—"  He cut himself off with an effort.

Celebrian sighed.  "Things changed, Elrond.  I'm sorry, but they did.  That is all.  Things changed."

"How?" he demanded harshly, feeling the first stirrings of anger.

"I don't have time to explain it all.  And there is more," she said, holding up a hand, forestalling him. 

_"More?"_ he asked, staring at her as he wondered what more she could possibly want.

She shifted in the moonlight, her face taking on a stony cast.  "More.  I have heard of Arwen's choice, you see."

"Arwen's—choice."  He floundered a moment, thrown off course by her abrupt change in conversation.  "Celebrian—"

"I am speaking to her, Elrond," she said calmly.  "I am going to ask her if she would like to come with us when we leave.  And if she does, I am taking her with me."

He was silent for the space of a moment, trying to understand what she had said; when at last the words made sense to him, they were accompanied by a resurgence of anger, as strong and sudden as it was surprising.  _I have lost my wife,_ he thought with a startling rush of rage, _and now she wishes to take my _daughter_ from me as well?_  He could not believe the gall—

"_Out _of the question," he responded harshly.  "I forbid it.  I will not let you—"

"You forbid it?"  One delicate brow went up, and he realized he was facing Celebrian as an adversary.  "_You?_  You can't," she said calmly.  "I will speak to her whether you will or no, and I will offer her the choice; and it is _her_ choice, not yours.  And if she chooses to go—"

"_No!_"  His voice was growing sharper now; he could hear himself becoming more angry, and was powerless to control it.  "I will not allow it.  I will not permit you to take my daughter—I will not allow her to be debased in such a fashion—"

"Your daughter," Celebrian responded, looking at him.  "Ah yes.  Your daughter.  _You_ will not permit _your_ daughter."  And as he frowned at her, wondering what she meant, she continued, "I regret to inform you that you have nothing to say in the matter.   I will speak to her, and should she so choose, I will bring her with me.  Things have changed.  Accept it."

He swallowed fury at her words, fighting to control himself, then after a long pause forced out, "_How?  How_ did they change?  I think you owe me at least that much explanation."

For a long time, Celebrian said nothing, then at last shrugged; he saw her do this out of the corner of his eye, for he kept his face turned to the ground.  He refused to look at her directly.  Perhaps he dared not.  "You are right," she said at last.  "I do, don't I?  At the very least, I owe _you, _if no one else….the only other I might have…."  She trailed off for a moment, closed her eyes, then sighed and glanced at him.  Elrond said nothing, only watched her, waiting in hurt and anger.  "Very well," she said at last.  "Though I….do not enjoy speaking….of the time before I was Briande, I will tell you."

Again, he said nothing, waiting in righteous silence.

She took a moment, to gather her thoughts, then spoke.  "The Land Beyond the Sea….was not what we thought it would be," she said slowly; she _spoke_ slowly, he realized, with many long pauses, as if she were unearthing words from crypts of memory.  "Do you remember?  We expected to sail the straight path, to return to Valinor in glory—we expected that we would be welcomed into our kinsmen's arms, with feasting and song—that we would arrive in a land of grandeur and wonder, beyond anything that Middle-Earth possessed—"  Suddenly she stopped with a grim, mirthless smile.  "That did not happen."  Then her smile sharpened.  "Although one might say in a way it did, if one were so inclined; the land of Seanchan does indeed contain many wonders the likes of which Middle-Earth has never seen.  So in a way our hopes were fulfilled, though that fulfillment would be enough to cause the Valar themselves to laugh….

"We were so arrogant," she continued, looking not at him, nor at anything in the outer world, he saw; her eyes were turned inward, gazing at memory.  "I know that we consider arrogance to be a trait of humans, but did you know that Others—that Elves—can be arrogant as well?  Arrogant indeed, passing the arrogance of Men…."  She paused again, then drew another sigh.  "It happened when we were within sight of land.  We were confused….it did not look like the coast of the Undying Lands to us; but we were not sure where else we could be, and were trying to get our bearings....perhaps that distraction is the reason why such misfortune was allowed to befall us.  For misfortune it was, no matter what else may have come of it.

"A ship hailed us. It was a strange ship, not one of Cirdan the Shipwright's design; it had a square, ribbed sail, and its hull was exceedingly strange.  Its captain, a human woman—a 'Daughter of Men,'" she said, and he heard the hesitation in her voice as she struggled to recall the Elven phraseology "—called upon us to stand down in the name of—"  Celebrian paused here and smiled, a smile that touched him even through his anger and grief.  "In the name of the Empress of the Nine Moons."  Her smile sharpened.  "That being a name we had never heard before, we of course paid the captain no heed.  Were we not Elves?  Did we stand down or turn aside at the request of a daughter of Men?  Of course not.  We sailed on, heedless.  And why should we not?  We were Elves, and this was our home, no matter that we did not know exactly where we were.  It was not for a human to tell us to stand aside.

"That was our mistake."

She closed her eyes again, and lowered her head, looking tired.  "A strange wind sprang up," she continued, "a wind from nowhere, running counter to the prevailing air currents; we could not tack across it, but only run before it, and it drove us directly toward the shore.  We did not….We did not know it at the time, or understand it, but the Seanchan ship had on board a _damane_ and _sul'dam_ pair, or perhaps more than one, and they were working the weather to drive us aground.  The Seanchan _damane_ are not as skilled in this as are the Windfinders of the Atha'an Miere,  or so I have heard, but they were skilled enough to accomplish their aim; the ship was driven aground and irrecoverably wrecked.  When we saw that the other ship was following us, dispatching landing parties in boats to chase us, we abandoned our own ship and scattered—_we_ scattered, in panic, we scattered, before these humans—into the countryside.  Some of us even managed to escape," she added, her smile so twisted that, like a knife held wrong, it cut unexpectedly.  "Some of us.  I was not one of them." 

"Celebrian—" he began, unsure of what he might say.

She continued as if she had not heard him.  "There was a battle," she said, looking past him, at things five hundred years gone.  "It was a short battle; they had _damane_, and we did not put up much of a fight.  I remember the whole thing, and could relate it all, but I will not; suffice it to say, that when it was over, I—"  She drew a breath to steady herself.  "I was confined in a _da'covale_ cage, surrounded by my shipmates, headed inland to Seandar.  To the Court of the Empress of the Nine Moons."

Elrond started to speak, to offer hercomfort; then stopped at her expression.  He watched her instead, her head bowed slightly, and her face composed and perfect in the moonlight.  _Oh, my wife,_ he thought inwardly, and ached for her; his anger was slowly draining away.

"The Empress at the time was Hueyia," she resumed calmly.  "Hueyia and those of her dynasty, the Riyame Paendrag, were well known as lovers of pleasure and the fine arts.  Empress Hueyia had been collecting all the Others—Elves—she could find, both those already within her realm—and there were some; many of the Elves who had taken ship for the Undying Lands in the past thousand or two thousand years had somehow or another found their way to Seanchan and been brought into that vast land—At any rate, Hueyia had been taking all the Elves she could find, those already within her realm and those arriving, as we had—she had been taking them for _da'covale_ to be a troupe of _shea_ dancers at her court; she wanted us, you see, for our beauty and our grace.  She had taken several ships before us, and did not even look at us when we came in; instead, she sent us directly to the trainer, to begin our transformation.

"The first few decades were….very hard," she said simply.  "It is hard for many reasons, to be a _shea_ dancer; not the least, that it is hard to go from being free to being _da'covale._  That was, perhaps, the hardest transition of all.  In my case, it was even harder, in that I was still suffering from the after-effects of…my…ordeal…"  Here she paled and looked away briefly before mastering herself again.  "So it was hard, very hard, on all of us.  Almost sixty were taken with me to be _shea_ dancers, and at the end of fifty years, only thirty of us were still alive."

She caught his startled look and smiled grimly.  "That's correct," she said softly, in response to the question he had not asked.  "Only half.  Some caught the displeasure of the Empress in some way and were killed; some turned to dreamsmoke to ease the pain of loss of freedom and loss of home and died in that fashion; some….they….contracted the wasting disease and so they died; some died of accidents, some of carelessness….In the end, though, no matter what it seemed killed them, it was only one cause; they simply lost the will to live. They could not bear to face the world of Seanchan, could not—they did not have the heart or the strength to endure the grief of loss and the life of a _da'covale_, and so they died.

"I was almost one of them.  I would have been, if not for….Ciriel."

_Ciriel._  For a moment, Briande fell silent, unearthing memories long buried—memories buried for a reason, for who of the Blood would ever choose to remember that she had once been _da'covale?_  She would never have willingly revisited—much less spoken of—these memories for _anyone_ but Elrond, and even with him, it was only the combined weights of duty and debt that forced her to it.  She thought of Ciriel again, Ciriel who had saved her life, and knew that there was no way she could make him see just how important this pale, fleshless girl had been to her in those first days, when she had been brutally torn from every single thing in the world that she knew or loved and thrust, reeling and dazed, terrified and alone, into a world she had never expected and into which she did not fit.  

She had lived the experience, and she still did not entirely comprehend it; how she could ever make Elrond see—Elrond, who had remained behind, who had stayed the last five hundred years here in Imladris, living—as he had lived—a life of freedom and familiarity in which he was respected and obeyed, surrounded those people and places he knew and who knew him in return—how she could make him understand the shock of alienation that had come so close to overwhelming her—she could not.  There was no way.  Ciriel was no part of his life, nor he of hers.

"Ciriel was…." She began, and then trailed off again, struggling to find the words to tell him, to explain to him the loneliness, the terror, the long, grueling days of arduous toil, the humiliation of having gone from free to slave, from Lady of Imladris to _da'covale_ _shea_ dancer.  And the orc-dens.  The horrible shadow of the orc-dens.  That ordeal had never been far from her mind.  The combat training she had received when she had become _morat'raken_ had helped to dispel it some, but the fear was still there, still present within her.  "She was someone who was very important to me," she finished, then stopped, for that did not encompass half of what the other Elfwoman had meant to her.  "She was," she continued, finding a better image, "the piece of driftwood I clung to to save myself from drowning."

"Was it so bad?" she heard him ask gently, into the silence that she had not realized she was leaving.  She raised her head and looked back at him.

"You have no idea," she said quietly, meeting his eyes.

He nodded and looked down, seemingly abashed.

"Ciriel was…one of us," she continued quietly, "an Other, but from Seanchan, not Middle-Earth; she had been born there.  She never told me who her parents were, but I gathered from a few things she said once that she may not have been fully Elven; very few of the Others born in Seanchan are, for there are so few of us compared to the humans that it is not unusual for an Other to take a human mate.  Or be taken.  Ciriel had been one such; she had been an _asa_ to several noblemen before the Empress bought her for a _shea_ dancer.  She told me about it; she had loved the last one deeply, and hoped he would take her for wife, for _asa_ sometimes become wives, but that was not to be.  It was as _asa _that she had probably caught the wasting that finally killed her."  She was silent for a moment, grieving for her friend, the first friend she had found in that strange and frightening place.  

"Why she took a liking to me, I don't know," she continued quietly.  "She told me once that I reminded her of her sister, but she never said anything more, so I don't know what she meant by that.  She….saved my life.

"She saved my life," Briande continued, "but she could not save her own.  She was already sick with the wasting by the time I knew her, though I did not recognize it at first, and even if she had not been—They have this smoke, in Seanchan," she explained, looking at her husband with dry eyes.  "It is made from the seeds of poppies, and many there use it for the dreams it brings when it is breathed in, so they call it dreamsmoke.  It is dangerous, because after a while all you care about is getting more of it, breathing more of it, and seeing more dreams—eventually you do not eat or sleep or do anything except dream the smoke dreams.  Ciriel used it," she said, swallowing.  "Many of the Others—Elves—who were captured with me eventually found it too, because while you are dreaming then you don't care about anything else, and when you are awake, then all you care about is the dreaming.  I might have gone that way—I certainly had pain enough—but the first time I tried, Ciriel shouted at me, and the next time she struck me and told me if she saw me doing it again, she would beat me and worse, abandon me.  She meant it too, and I did not dare take that risk—she was the only thing that kept me alive," she admitted, and looked down. 

"The smoke would probably have caught her eventually--" she went on, collecting herself, "—I saw enough of my shipmates go that way so that I knew what the final outcome would have been--but as I said before, she was already ill when I met her, and between the two, the illness and the dreamsmoke, she didn't have a chance.  Soon she reached the point where she could no longer perform.  About a hundred and fifty years after I was first taken _da'covale,_ she was dismissed from the troupe and sent I knew not where—at least, not then."

She was silent a moment in the moonlight, thinking.  Elrond was silent too; she could not decipher the expression he wore, nor did she much care to.  She wondered if he even understood the favor she was doing him—the gift she was giving him in memory of their time of marriage—the cost that these thoughts exacted from her, in grief and pain.  No Blood who had ever been _da'covale_ would ever speak of such a thing except in direst circumstances; she was baring for him a wound that had not healed—would never heal.  She pushed the thought aside.  Of course he did not understand—how could he?  She would not have, before she had become Seanchan.

"Celebrian, I am sorry," he said, reaching out to lay a hand on her arm.

She shrugged him off.  "You have nothing to be sorry for.  It didn't happen to you." 

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, and at last, Briande marshaled her thoughts enough to go on.  "I met her again, fifty years or so later.  The dynasty changed, you see; the Riyame Paendrags were overthrown to be replaced with the Athaem Paendrag dynasty.  The first empress of this line, Wulei, was a stern moralist; she believed that the Riyames had become weak and decadent and was determined that the same thing should not happen to her line.  Among other changes, she banned public _shea_ dancer troupes and discouraged private ones; she taxed them heavily, forbade the sale of _da'covale_ for _shea_ dancers and the employment of trainers….And one of the first things she did, of course, was to disband her own troupe.  Those of us who remained were scattered and dispersed, reintegrated into the structure of the Empress's government in various areas….I was sent to the _to'raken_ stables, to become a _to'raken_ _da'covale._  And it was there that I was reunited with Ciriel.

"She was dying."

So blunt, that statement.  So plain and ugly in its truth.  It _sounded_ ugly to her, still, after all these years.   She could see pain for her in Elrond's gaze; she felt him reach out to touch her again and again brushed him aside, no matter that she could see her rejection hurt him.  He had no part in this pain; it was her own.  It had helped to make her what she was now. __

"She was so weak that she could barely perform her tasks."  So weak, Briande thought grimly, that she could barely breathe, though there was no reason to relate that.  The words she spoke seemed disconnected somehow from her, from Blooded Lady and Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ Briande Duchen Paendrag.  "The _der'morat'to'raken_ in charge of the stables had given up trying to make her work; there was just no point to it.  She was not being insolent, and she was so ill that beating her would do no good.  They were hardly going to waste medical care on a _to'raken_ stable _da'covale_, even if there had been a cure for the wasting which there wasn't, so they simply left her to lie on her pallet."  Dying slowly, by inches.  Briande swallowed at the thought of what had been left of her friend.  "I would come and sit with her when I had a moment or two, telling her useless things, things that we would do when she recovered—which of course was nonsense, she wasn't going to recover, anyone could see that, but I thought—"  Had she, she wondered now?  Had she been thinking at all?  There had hardly been time for thought, back then.  "If I could pretend I didn't know that, then maybe it wouldn't happen…."  Her voice broke.  She swallowed hard, trying to regain control; she saw pain, again, in Elrond's face, but he did her the courtesy of remaining silent and allowing her time.

"She died then?" he asked after a time, and Briande saw what he was doing; he was giving her a kindness, for all she had to do was say yes or no, and move on to other things.  But as she started to speak, memory caught her.  Words she had spent three hundred years trying simultaneously to forget and fulfill rang again in her ears and she was back at the side of a skeletal figure lying on a filthy pallet in a dark, squalid _to'raken_ stable.

"She told me not to worry….she said, the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills and that when the Pattern spun her out again, perhaps we would meet in a better place….then she looked up at me and met my eyes, and she said…."

Briande fell silent. 

_Celebrian, listen.  You are wise and strong.  You have so many gifts that I never had—don't let them go to waste.  Don't end up killing yourself like me—_

_Ciriel, please.  _Please _don't talk like that, Ciriel—you'll be all right—_

_No.  Promise me, Celebrian.  Promise me that you will not end up like me.  Promise me that you will find a way to win your freedom.  Celebrian, promise me.  _Promise _me, Celebrian._  Promise—

The pain of a hand clamped on hers, almost strong enough to break the bones—how there could be so much strength left in a dying woman's fingers, _Briande Duchen Paendrag_ did not know.

Ciriel, please—you're frightening me— Promise! 

_I promise…._

"She told me to gain my freedom."  Strange that such an encounter—one that had guided her every action almost to this day—could be reduced to such a simple, dry sentence.  "I promised, and she told me that she could then die in peace.  Soon after, she closed her eyes, and soon after that, she breathed no more."

Elrond swallowed at the pain he heard in his wife's voice, sternly controlled, yet there none the less.  He reached out to touch her again; she had rebuked him before, yet he had no other way to express his sympathy.

"You don't have to go on," he said, with fumbling, awkward words.

"I do though," she replied at once and looked back at him.  He saw that though her eyes were brighter than they should be, her face was perfectly composed and calm.  "So that you will know how and why our paths diverged, and so that you will never have cause to question."

"Celebrian—"

"After she died," Celebrian continued quietly, "I came as close as I ever had to simply lying down and dying, even closer than in my first days of captivity.  Then I had had Ciriel.  Now, I had no one.  I remember—"

She paused for a moment, her blue eyes turning inward.  "I remember the exact night," she said slowly.  "It was less than a year after her death.  I had been worked very hard that day, and beaten by the head _der'morat'to'raken_—

"That night, I dropped, exhausted and sick, onto my filthy straw pallet, and I began to weep," she said quietly, speaking, he thought, less to him than to herself.  "The walls I had built up to allow me to survive, to function in this world for which I was never intended and into which I did not fit, came down.  I had no defenses left.  I thought of….of my ordeal in the orc-dens, and I thought of how I had lost Ciriel and how I had lost Arwen and Elladan and Elrohir—and you, my husband," she added quietly, "and it seemed like I had lost everything.  I had lost everything there was for me in the world.  I lay there weeping, and I longed to die.  I wanted to die," she repeated, regardless of her husband's horrified stare.  "I lay there and waited—I actually waited for death to come and take me, to relieve me of this existence that had become a torment to me.

"And it did not.

"For as I lay there, something….else….happened," she said slowly, frowning in thought.  "I have thought about what happened ever since that night, and I still cannot explain it entirely, but as I lay there, yearning for death, a—a—_realization_ came over me.  I cannot describe it in any other way but that," she said, lifting her eyes and looking at him with an almost surprised expression, as if the emotions were occurring to her again for the first time.  "I, Celebrian, daughter of Celeborn and Galadriel the Lady of the Golden Wood—I, wife to Elrond Half-Elven and Lady of Imladris in my own right—mother of Arwen Undomiel the Evenstar, whom all hailed as being as beautiful as Luthien Tinuviel had been—I, Celebrian, was lying on a filthy straw pallet crawling with vermin above a dark and fetid _to'raken_ stable, too weak and exhausted to move, weeping desperately and wishing only the release of death….and not a single person in the world knew or cared."  She said those last words slowly, staring at him as if to drive the emphasis home, then repeated, "Not one person in the world knew or cared.  Can you _imagine?_  And what was more," she went on, her voice filled with surprise, "nobody would care even if they _did_ know.  Everybody had far too many problems of his or her own to worry about me.  Nobody was going to come along to save me.  Nobody was going to help me.  _Nobody_…._cared,_" she repeated, pausing and staring at him to emphasize the point.

"That is a _terrible_ thing to realize," she said, looking at him with that look of surprise.  "That is an absolutely _terrible_ thing, the knowledge that not one person in the world cares about your plight.  There are no other words to describe it.  It is _terrible._  And yet….it was _good,_" she said earnestly.  "It was _good_ for me to know that.  Because as I lay there, I realized…..that I was on my own.  And—in that moment….it was as if….I decided something," she said haltingly, trying to put into words a process that had taken place on a gut level.  "I can't explain it, but it was as if….I decided….

"The past was past," she said suddenly, strongly.  "The past was behind me.  It was finished with.  Forever.  There was no recapturing it, not then, not ever.  Celeborn, Galadriel, Elladan, Elrohir, you, Arwen, Imladris, Lothlorien, Middle-Earth—they were all part of the past.  They were gone.  There was no going back, and it was time to look ahead.

"I suppose you could say, if you so wished," she said, smiling grimly, "that I had decided to live."

Elrond could not speak.  He could find no words.

"From that night forward, I never looked back.  Instead of dreaming of the past, I clung to the promise that Ciriel had made me give, and threw all my effort into trying to change my future—I had all the time in the world, remember," she said with a laugh, "for I was immortal.  I was working in the _to'raken_ stables, so it seemed that they might be my avenue up.  I pestered my superiors day in and day out," she continued, smiling, "for any scrap of information they could give me about the _to'raken,_ and hoarded what little I could pry out of them.  I performed every task I was set to the best of my ability, and went beyond wherever I could, often volunteering for extra duty if it would give me an opportunity to work directly with the _to'raken._  My efforts were not in vain either; diligence paid off.  Within five years, the head _der'morat'to'raken_ had placed me in charge of all the _to'raken_ stable _da'covale_ and had begun to teach me a little about working with the _raken_—more difficult, for they are more delicate, high-strung beasts, thus imparting higher status to those who work with them.  I could be patient; I was willing to wait as long as I had to.

"In the thirty-third year after Ciriel's death, I had my chance," she related.  "In the thirty-third year after I had decided to live, a plague hit the stables of the _raken_ and the _to'raken_.  By this time I had gained an innate knowledge of both creatures, and combined with my innate Elven talent at healing, I was able to cure them where even the most skilled _der'morat'raken_ failed.  Almost single-handedly, I saved almost the entire flight of _raken_ and _to'raken_ combined.  And…."  She stopped and smiled.  "And Empress Malaina noticed.

"Malaina was a hard woman, but also a fair and just one; she rewarded merit.  She called me before the Crystal Throne—I stepped into her presence and felt the….the _awe_ that the Crystal Throne inspires—it is a huge _ter'angreal_ designed especially for that purpose—and I went down on my face before her, and she said…."

Celebrian stopped here, remembering; her expression softened, her eyes grew wide and misty; her face looked almost radiant at the memory, an expression so familiar to Elrond it brought pain.  For once, she had looked the same way at him.

"She said," Celebrian went on, her voice soft and musical as she recounted the memory, " 'Rise, my most honored servant, and be _sei'taer_ in my sight.  You have saved my _raken_ flights; ask any boon that you might wish.'

"And I rose, but I didn't—dare—look her in the face.  Not while she sat on the Crystal Throne.  I said, 'What I ask is only my heart's desire.  I ask to be manumitted from _da'covale_ status and apprenticed to the _morat'to'raken_.  That is all that I wish.'

"And she laughed and said, 'Do you wish for so little?  Then I must better it, that all may know the generosity of the Empress of the Nine Moons to those who serve her well.  From this day forward, you are manumitted, no longer _da'covale._  Apprenticed you shall certainly be, but not to the _morat'to'raken,_ but the _morat'raken._  Furthermore, I hereby raise you to the Blood of Hawkwing Paendrag, to be granted the lands of Duchen on the edge of the Sen T'jore, and from this day forward, your name is no longer Celebrian; that is the name you bore as _da'covale,_ and it is not suitable that one of the Blood should be known by a _da'covale_ name.  You are now Briande, that is, 'healer;' Briande Duchen Paendrag.  Take these gifts from the Empress and go, and tell any who asks that Empress Malaina is not ungenerous to those who serve her well.'"

She paused and remembered as Elrond watched her; she was glowing from within at the memory.  He, for his part, was having a difficult time crediting it.  How his wife, the Lady of Imladris, could gain such pleasure from simply being honored by a Daughter of Men, he could not imagine; it was, in its way, as far outside his experience as anything else the Seanchan brought.  He could not even conceptualize what she must have been feeling.

Celebrian—_Briande_, he remembered unhappily—did not notice.  She was still, rapt in the joy of the moment, savoring it again; the sorrow she had shown while relating what had come before had been washed away by an emotion which he recognized as triumph.  "When I left the presence of the Crystal Throne," she continued, remembering with a laugh, "I was almost literally walking on air.  Of course, nobody _wanted_ Duchen, which was why she was able to give it to me—it's still there, on the edge of the Sen T'jore, a mass of tangles and vines and brambles and bushes and various beasts, poison and otherwise, who skulk through the undergrowth waiting to grab an unwary passerby—but it's mine.  It's _mine,_" she said with a fierce possessiveness.  "I _earned_ it.  I had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams—beyond Ciriel's wishes for me—can you _imagine?_  I entered the room as _da'covale,_ respected by no one, honored by no one, _sei'mosiev_ in the eyes of even the humblest street peddler—and I _left_ a landed Lady of the Blood of Paendrag, _morat'raken_ instead of _morat'to'raken_—I had been _permitted to stand _sei'taer _in the sight of the Empress!_  Can you _believe_ it?  That's something even High Lady Suroth can't say.  And what was even better, I had _earned_ it, by exercise of my knowledge, skills and wisdom.

"From that day forward," she said, grinning, "everything started to go my way.  It was harder than I had thought it might be to learn to be _morat'raken_—the _raken_ are like the _to'raken_, but not the same—but I persevered and did not fail.  Within ten years I had been made first full _morat'raken_ and then _der'morat_.  And since that time, I have been rising, slowly but steadily, through the ranks of the _der'morat'raken_ until I am here," she said quietly, looking at him.  "Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ to High Lady Suroth's Expeditionary Force.  If all goes well, if there are no mishaps, I will almost certainly be tapped to be Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ to the _Hailene._  When our forces go the other way," she said, looking beyond him, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight.  "When we cross the Aryth Ocean to the Westlands, to bring the name of Paendrag back to Paendrag's home.  To seek and find the Dragon Reborn, that we might bring him to kneel before the Crystal Throne, so that he might fight alongside us at Tarmon Gai'don….the Last Battle. 

"And….after that…."  Her words became more tentative now, trailing off as she looked beyond him.  "Assuming that we survive, that the world survives the Last Battle…well then…."  She paused now, and he saw that her eyes were shadowed, as if she were thinking around the edges of something that both excited and frightened her, something she almost did not dare to name to herself as a desire.  "Not in the lifetime of this Empress, certainly," she said quickly.  "Nor in the lifetime of her daughter Tuon, who will most likely be her heir.  Most likely not in the lifetime of this dynasty.  But….well….I have all the time in the world….if I am not killed….if the world is not Broken….why not, yes, why not?  If the correct opportunity presents itself….for instance after this dynasty falls—which it surely will, for all dynasties fall— And if I want it," she said hurriedly.  "Only if I want it, which I do not at present and may not ever; on the heights, all paths are paved with daggers….if it can be easily enough done, and most especially if it could be _rightly_ done—and if I have an escape, for only a fool boxes herself in with no means of escape—but….why not?  It would not be….the first time….in the history of Seanchan….that a former _da'covale_ has—become—" she paused, looking scared right down to the bone of what she was about to say, then swallowed and finished it "—_Empress._"

Silence fell as Celebrian—no, _Briande_—sat there contemplating what she had said—the hope that perhaps, before, she had not even dared to articulate to herself.  Elrond did not try to fill the silence.  He was overwhelmed by what she had told him, all she had endured, how far she had come; he could barely comprehend her tale, for it was so far removed from his own experience.  The two sat there in silence as the night wind, laden with the sweet perfume of many blossoms, brought up the distant strains of a song from the Seanchan encampment:

So go and bow your head and weep 

_For your world won't change while you sleep_

_So go and bow your head and weep_

_For the summer that was lost now is gone_

_The summer that was lost now is gone…._

"Of course, that's only if I want it," said Briande at last, speaking hastily, like someone backing away from the edge of a cliff.  "I don't want it yet and may not ever; and even if I do I may never find a way or a time.  And even if I did, I would not want to be Empress forever.  Only for fifty years, or perhaps a hundred, and then to retire to the estates of Duchen on the edge of the Sen T'jore and see if I could not carve a productive patch of land out of the jungle.  But do you see now, Elrond, why I cannot go back to being your wife again?  I closed the door on the past a long time ago, and I am sorry, but you are part of that past.  And while I was happy here as Lady of Imladris, I cannot be Lady of Imladris anymore.  I have grown beyond that now, away from it, and I cannot be reduced to that again without giving up some part of myself.  _That,_ I will not do.  I am sorry."

Still, Elrond did not speak.  He was stunned to silence by what Briande had told him, and as he stared back at her in the moonlight, it seemed suddenly, strangely, as if he were looking at a stranger, her face unrecognizable.  He struggled to make sense of what he had heard.  Words such as Tarmon Gai'don, _shea_ dancer, _da'covale,_ were unknown to him; he had strained his comprehension to the limit trying to grasp what she was saying, but in the end it had come through to him that this person was not his wife of old.  

She leaned forward now, frowning as she looked into his face.  "Elrond?" she asked, apparently concerned by whatever it was that she saw there.

One idea then rose to the surface of his mind, coming to the fore of the roiling mass of impressions called up by her recitation.   "You can't have Arwen."   He barely knew he would speak until he said it.

She frowned again, more sharply.  "I'm sorry?"

"You can't have Arwen."  This time his voice was stronger, more sure.  His anger, dampened by Celebrian's pain, was beginning to reawaken—and why not?  This was not Celebrian.  This was Briande.  "You can't have her.  I will not allow it."

"You will not?"

"No."  His voice was unsteady with the force of his emotions.  He spoke wildly, scarcely knowing what he said.  "You—you may have taken my wife from me, but I will not permit you to have my daughter too.  I won't let that happen—"

"Won't let _what_ happen?"  Briande asked, raising an eyebrow.

He looked at her, and his anger was reawakening.  "I won't let her become like _you._"

"She's my daughter too."  Briande's words were cool, dispassionate as she said what she had said before.  "You have nothing to say about it."

"You want to take her away from me and make her into a mortal Seanchan—" he accused.

"_You_ were prepared to let her _die_ by permitting her to go with Aragorn," Briande responded, with a trace of anger of her own.   "You're not willing to release her to me?"

"I know who Aragorn is," Elrond responded bitterly.  "I have no idea who you are, _Supreme Der'Morat'Raken Briande._"  He threw her title at her as a deliberate insult and said with reawakened fury, "I may have no choice but to abandon hope for my wife, but I will tell you now, Arwen is _mine_ and I will not give her to the Seanchan."

Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ Briande tilted her head and regarded him icily.  "Arwen is _yours,_" she repeated slowly.  "_You_ will not 'give' her to the Seanchan.  Interesting.  I had remembered that you could be possessive and controlling, but I had forgotten to what extent."

"Possessive?" he spat with a bitter laugh.  "Controlling?  I should say.  You wish to take my daughter from me, to make her into something she is not, something that goes against everything that she is and will be—"

"Something that goes against what she is?  Or something that goes against what you _think_ she is?"

"What?"

"I will not 'take' your daughter from you," Briande continued as if he had not spoken, her voice chill.  "I will only give her the choice.  It will be up to her to choose whether she remains in Middle-Earth—"

"I will not let her make that choice!" he insisted.  "She is all that is left to me--I will not let her—"

"Why? Because you're afraid she'll choose the wrong way?  Because you're afraid of losing her?"

Elrond broke off, staring at Briande, unable to think of a word to reply.  Now she smiled, with the thinnest edge of scorn. 

"How did she ever convince you to let her fall in love with Aragorn?"

"I don't understand what you—"  
  


"Oh, I think you do," she replied, and now there was anger in her voice as well.  "Are you even listening to yourself?  You say 'my daughter' like you say 'my sword' or 'my horse'—"

"I do not—"

"You do.  You always have," Briande insisted.  "Not just about her, but about the twins—even, occasionally, about me.  I don't care for it and never have."

Stung, Elrond retorted, " I simply have no interesting in seeing my—in seeing Arwen turned into—into some pallid imitation of a—a Seanchan beast handler—"

 "But you're willing to let her die."

"I—"  He stopped, unable to come up with a reply, unable to put into words the complex web of feelings overwhelming him.  "That is her choice," he said at last, knowing he was only injuring his stance by doing so but unable to come up with anything else to say.

"And this would be her choice as well.  It is the same."

"It is _not_!" he insisted desperately.

Briande looked at him.  "How?" she asked.  "How not?"

"I—She—"  He stared at the tiles of the terrace, attempting to put his thoughts in order.  It was hard.  The story Celebrian—Briande—had told him, the shock of seeing her again after all this time, the pain and anger of learning that she would not return to him, the general upheaval caused by the arrival of the Seanchan, the memory of the destruction of Isengard—all these things combined in him now, colliding together.  He drew a breath, suddenly feeling tired and unsteady, and passed a hand over his face.  "Her choice of Aragorn—" he began at last, aware that his voice held more than a tinge of desperation, "is a choice that is….sanctified, through custom and through tradition.  I—I faced such a choice myself, as did my brother Elros, and though I chose the other way, it is something that is rightfully hers, that belongs to her through her bloodline.  And though I—though I do not understand why she or anyone would ever choose to be mortal, I know that I cannot stand in her way should she so choose; I watched my brother Elros choose in her fashion, and though I tried to reason with him, to convince him otherwise, in the end it was his choice and I could not stop him from doing so.  Though I do not approve, this choice is rightfully hers—and though I do not wish to see her wed Aragorn, he is of the Dunedain—the last descendant of the line of my brother.  He is known to me.  To be a Seanchan—"  He stopped, then shook his head, able to repeat only, "I will not permit it."

Briande looked at him for a long moment.  "You would rather see her die than lose her."

"_Yes,_" he said fiercely, and now his anger returned fully.  "I will—I will not permit you to make my daughter into a stranger to me, as was done with Celebrian.  I will not permit you to debase her in that fashion—to change from what she is now, Arwen Undomiel, the Evenstar of Imladris—"

He stopped then, for she was regarding him, pale and still in the moonlight.  "Perhaps your desire that she remain as she is is _why_ she chose the mortal life."  And as he stared at her, unable to believe what she had just said to him, Briande rose from the bench and raised her helmet to her head.  She secured it beneath her chin, throwing her features into shadow and obscuring them from him.  "I am sorry this causes you pain, Elrond of the Others," she said formally, addressing him as a Seanchan might, "but I will tell you now that you cannot and will not prevent me from speaking to my daughter and offering her the choice.  If she chooses to remain with you then that is well.  If she chooses to come with me and with the Seanchan, however, allow me to warn you not to interfere.  If you attempt to keep her against her will and mine, let me assure you that you will most certainly fail."  Seeing his expression, she softened slightly.  "Forgive me for speaking in this way to you, but please understand that I won't let you stop her from leaving, should that be her choice."

"Celebrian—" he said quietly, an appeal, a plea.

She did not answer.  She simply turned and strode off down the path, her boot heels ringing.  Leaving him behind her and bereft.


	9. Every New Beginning

What is the real reason that you're choosing to sacrifice your immortality? 

Arwen had stopped running, out of breath, and had dropped down to sit by the edge of Luthien's fountain depicting the instant of her discovery by Beren.  Her head was spinning, her mind confused.  Perhaps Keille was still chasing her; perhaps not.  Arwen did not know, and in fact, did not care.

What is the real reason you're choosing to sacrifice your immortality? 

            She had avoided that question before, but now she knew she could no longer do so.  She would have to face it.

            Keille's voice spoke in her mind again.  _What is the real—_

            Not for love of Aragorn.  Keille would never accept that answer, Arwen knew without having to ask her.  Keille most likely, in her place, would never even have fooled herself into thinking that to begin with.

            But if not for love of Aragorn, then why?  Why had _she_ accepted that answer, when Keille would not?  Why had she been ready to—

            Arwen closed her eyes and drew a deep breath to steady herself.  She opened her eyes in the moonlight, calm, and took in the serene, quiet, placid, ordered vista before her—each plant, flower, and blade of grass in its place, growing where she had planted it, for now and forever.  Quiet.  Perfect.  Unchanging.

            She turned to look at the statue of Luthien behind her, cool and perfect in its marble gleaming.  She remembered again that Luthien's stone-carved, immobile face was an exact duplicate of her own, that her father had had it made in her likeness to surprise her and delight her.  It had, three hundred years ago.

            It did not now.

            She reached out, dizzily, to touch the statue, seeing her own hand white on Luthien's white arm; there was, in the moonlight, no difference between the two shades.  Flesh and marble; marble and flesh.  Her hand was warm where Luthien's white arm was cold, but give it time, she thought giddily, only time was necessary.  Another thousand years, two thousand years….how long before no one could tell the two of them apart?  Her father was halfway there already.

            _I can't stand it.  _

            The realization came to her not as a revelation, but as a simple remembering of something she already knew was true.  It _was _true.  She could not stand staying, living, until the marble weight of years settled around her heart and chilled her to the bone, until she was truly dead in all but name.  As her father was.  Life, she knew from watching her plants, meant growth, change, both flowering and withering; the only things that did not continue to change over time were lifeless objects—rocks, stones….and Elves.  Others, as that short Seanchan daughter of Men would call them, she thought, remembering Keille.

            _I can't stand it,_ she thought again, and drew in breath at the thought, for that was the answer to her question.  That was why she had chosen as she did.  Not for love of Aragorn, she realized as she turned her gaze to the depths of her soul, but for despair over her own fate.  For in Aragorn, she had seen, or hoped to, a fire, a passion and courage that could warm her cold bones, chase the creeping immobility of years from her blood.  That could save her from the fate of becoming an animate statue, no longer capable of learning or growing or changing in any meaningful way.  Had she seen another way, she would have taken that way, for she had no wish to die.  But even more than death did she fear being trapped, trapped in a prison of years….and of love.

            _Father would never have let me go any other way,_ she realized now; the veil over her eyes had come down and she was seeing the truth.  _I could not have brought myself to leave him any other way; that is as just, for they are one and the same.  But Luthien….my ancestress….she went before me.  She showed me how to do it.  Father could not object, for I was simply exercising my birthright.  I wonder, Luthien,_ she thought crazily, looking up at her face in marble, in the moonlight.  _The songs always said it was for love, but I wonder, Luthien, if you did not feel as I do….if you did not fear, as I do…._

_            And is that fire really there, Aragorn?  Is that fire really strong enough to save me from the chill?  Or did Father merely think he saw, and I leap to believe what I desperately needed to believe?_

_            Oh, Father…._

            Arwen bowed her head to her hands and began to weep, shedding tears of confusion and exhaustion joined.  She wept so long and so hard that she did not hear the other approach until a gentle voice spoke.

            "Why do you cry, little one?"

            Arwen sucked in her breath in fear and looked up; the voice that had spoken had been oddly familiar, though it had been laden with the slurred sounds of the Seanchan.

            The woman who stood before her, looking down at her, was tall—almost too tall for a _raken_-rider, though she wore the armor of one.  Her features were indistinct, thrown into shadow by the rim of her Seanchan helmet.  For all that Arwen could not make out her face, however, she almost felt that there was something familiar about the woman.

            "Who—who are you?" she faltered.

            "My name is Briande Duchen Paendrag, Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken_ of the High Lady Suroth's Expeditionary Force of the Ever Victorious Army of Seanchan," the other responded calmly, reciting her title as if speaking about the weather.  

            "Briande….I know you," Arwen realized.  "Keille Sar has spoken of you—"

            "Keille Sar is my backrider," the _der'morat_ acknowledged.  "She told me all about you as well, Arwen Undomiel of the Others."

            "D-did she?"

            "Yes."  Briande shifted slightly; a flash of moonlight illuminated her features almost to the point of recognizability, and then was gone.  "She told me that you have a choice before you."

            "She—she did?"

            "Yes, and that you have chosen death—you have chosen to forfeit that which is rightfully yours, for the love of a mortal man, rather than to live out the rest of your rightful lifespan."  The _raken_-rider looked down at her.

            Arwen bowed her head.  "I—I did, but…." she managed, and then fell silent.

            "But?" Briande's voice was gentle.

            Arwen was silent, unable to speak what came next; she suddenly looked up at Briande and asked, "Keille told me that you were an—an Elf? An Other?"

            Briande nodded.  "That's right.  I am one of the Others, as our kind is known in Seanchan."

            "Would—would _you_ take such a choice?" she asked, appealing to those shadowed features.

            Briande's response was immediate.  "No," she answered firmly, then modified it, her voice gentle.  "Not unless I was very unhappy where I was."

            Arwen swallowed and nodded, looking down.  "I see."

            "Are you unhappy, little one?"

            _Little one…_  Nobody had called her "little one" except her mother, gone five hundred years ago across the sea.  The sound of it brought tears to her eyes; for a moment she was afraid she might start weeping again.

            "I….I…."

            "Yes?"

            "I don't know," she whispered miserably.

            "You don't?"  

            "No….I…."

            "Then why are you weeping?"  Again, the voice was gentle and soft, an invitation rather than an order.

            "I….Because…."  She broke off, unable to speak for a moment, wondering whether she should even confide her thoughts to this stranger; then, unable to control herself any longer, burst out, "Because I can see time passing and leaving me behind, unchanged.  Because I can see the world around me growing, changing, making itself new again from year to year, while I only grow older and lose hope, while I remain among my kinsmen who are dead in all but name, until I die too like the rest of them, from the heart."

            "Your father—"

            "My father can't see.  He won't see.  The rest of my kinsmen are just the same.  The purpose of life is to learn and grow—what do you call it when you no longer learn and grow?" she asked in anguish.  "I do not _wish_ to die, not physically, but if the only other course that is left to me is to be nothing but the Evenstar forever, then I might as _well_ be dead, don't you see?"

            "I do," Briande responded thoughtfully.  Arwen was suddenly struck with an idea.

            "In Seanchan….Are there Elves—Others—in Seanchan?"

            "Some.  A few.  Not as many as there are here."

            "Do they—do you—live as we do here, trapped in the same life forever, thinking the same thoughts, doing the same things, throughout eternity?"

            Arwen thought the other Elflady smiled in the shadow of her helmet.  "No.  Seanchan is very large, and there are very few of us compared with the numbers of mortals surrounding us.  We cannot withdraw among our own kind as you do here; we are forced to go among mortals and live with them in their world.  It works well…it keeps us young."

            "And you?  Were you always a—a—a Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken?_"

            "I?  No," Briande said, and this time Arwen was sure she smiled.  "I was not always.  I started out…."  Her voice grew distant as if she were remembering.  "I started out….very low indeed, but through a great deal of very hard work and learning, I eventually rose to become first _morat'raken_, then _der'morat_, and now Supreme _Der'Morat._  Nor will I be Supreme _Der'Morat_ forever.  I might," she mused quietly, "go higher yet, with luck….And if I do not, well, I am not yet bored with being _Der'Morat'Raken,_ but when I do become bored with it….Seanchan is a vast realm.  There are many lives within it, waiting to be explored—and as an Other—an Elf—I have all the time in the world.  I just might get the chance, in time, to explore every one of them."

            Arwen sat, silent, for a moment, envisioning what Briande had said.  An entire realm—a world full of possibilities—it sounded wonderful, beyond wonderful.  The very idea took her breath away.  "I would….like to see it," she breathed wistfully.  

            Briande tilted her head and looked at Arwen very seriously.  "Would you really?" she asked quietly.

            Arwen drew in her breath sharply, guessing at what Briande was asking her.  She did not hesitate for a moment, however, before lifting her head and meeting Briande's eyes in the shadow of her helmet.  "More than anything," she replied, her voice firm. 

            Briande was silent for a long time, directing a calm, evaluative stare at Arwen, the other Elfmaiden did her best not to flinch under it.  At last, Briande asked, "But what about Aragorn? Your father?" 

            Arwen hung her head.  "Aragorn is a good man," she began heavily, "but he….I think the only reason I loved him is because he was another path.  Even now, I am not sure if the qualities I thought I loved him for were real, or if I only saw them because….because my father did, and because I desperately needed to find an escape.  And as for my father….My father hasn't had a new idea in over a thousand years—" 

            "I know," Briande murmured softly, but Arwen paid her no heed.

            "—and he doesn't understand this.  He could never understand this.  I want…I…I can't be the Evenstar for eternity," she said, tipping back her head and looking up at Briande wildly.  "I can't.  If I have to die for it, I can't."

            She thought Briande would say something at this point, but the other Elflady only looked at her for a long time.  At last she spoke, and when she spoke, her words were so unexpected they caught Arwen by surprise.  "Arwen," she said gently, "do you know who I am?"

            "I—"  Arwen blinked in confusion.  "What do you mean?"

            In answer, the _der'morat_ before her reached up and unbuckled her helmet strap.  Slowly, she lowered it from her head, throwing her features into the full light of the moon.  

            Arwen froze.  She could not move.  Her breath caught in her throat; she was silenced, the power of speech having been taken from her, as she stared at the mother she had not seen in five hundred years.  Celebrian watched her for a long moment too, her eyes perhaps a little too bright; Arwen's own eyes stung and watered with emotion that she could not speak to express.

            "Well, daughter?" Celebrian asked tenderly after a time.  "Have you nothing to say to me after all these years?"

            Arwen swallowed, her lips trembling, then finally managed to whisper, "M—Mother…"  She stared at her mother in shock for a long moment, wondering if she was dreaming, then whispered, "Is….is it really you?"

            In answer, her mother smiled warmly and held out her arms.  And then at that moment, her paralysis broke; Arwen did not hesitate, but went to that embrace, throwing her own arms around her mother's leather-armored body and clinging to her as if she never wanted to let go.  "Oh, Mother…." She was on the edge of tears; her mind was reeling from the joy of the reunion, and from the sheer incongruity of her mother turning up here, in the form of a _der'morat'raken_.  "Oh, Mother—_how??_" she brought out at last blinking back tears and looking up at her.   "How—did this happen?  What are you doing here?  I—" 

            Celebrian smiled again, and Arwen saw at that moment a single silvery line of moisture reflecting light from her mother's face.  "That is a long story, my daughter, too long for me to relate to you now—though perhaps someday I will tell you the full tale."  She squeezed her only daughter tightly again.  "Suffice it to say," she continued, collecting herself, "that I am here now, and that I have come to offer you a choice."

            "A—a choice?" Arwen faltered, though her heart already knew what it would be—and what she would say. 

            "Yes."  Celebrian released her and stepped back, looking at her with compassion.  "This is that choice:  You may remain with your father, and with Aragorn if that is what you so desire.  If that is what you wish, then that is well.  Or, you may come with me, with the Ever Victorious Army to start, as we continue on toward Mordor.  Once we have overthrown Sauron, then you can return with us to Seanchan and we will see about finding you a life there—if you want, perhaps we can even see that you are accepted as an apprentice _morat'raken._  It is your choice entirely.  Just know, my daughter, that whichever way you choose I am proud of you and love you."  And she smiled again at Arwen, her eyes warm.

            Arwen did not even need to think; her response was instant.  "Take me with you," she said at once.  "Take me with you to be a _morat'raken_.  Take me away from here, to Seanchan, where nobody knows that I am the Evenstar.  Where I can be whatever I wish, unfettered by the weight of the past.  Take me with you."

            Her mother looked at her seriously now.  "Are you sure, Arwen?" she asked, holding her with an eye.  "Seanchan is very different from Middle-Earth, and once you have gone there, you will not be able to return, at least not unchanged.  I will not take you unless you are absolutely sure."

"Yes.  I am sure," she said at once.  "I am sure that this is what I want—I think I have been sure since the moment I met Keille.  But—"  She paused now, looking worried.  "What of Father?"

"I spoke to your father.  He is not happy with the situation, but I think he will acquiesce.  I am prepared to take you with us.  If, that is," she said again, "you are sure—"

"I already said I was, Mother," Arwen responded, meeting her mother's—Celebrian's—_Briande's_ eyes squarely.  "I want to go with you, to be a _morat'raken_—to be anything that will allow me to grow and change and live as it seems mortals do—"

A sudden outpouring of emotion rose up in her, causing her eyes to well up again; feeling suddenly too small to contain her emotions, she embraced her mother again, clasping her hard.  Her mother embraced her in return, smiling down at her.   So caught up was she that she did not hear the running footsteps announcing Keille Sar's arrival onto the scene.

"_Arwen!  Arwen!_  Do you ever run fast, girl!" the short human woman gasped, skidding to a halt as she entered the clearing.  "Arwen, are you all right?  After you went running off like that I thought—wait—"  She stopped as she caught sight of Arwen and her mother together, and frowned.  "Am I interrupting something?"

Arwen released her mother and turned toward the daughter of Men she had befriended.  "Hello, Keille," she said with a trembling smile.  "I am well—I thank you for your concern.  I believe I have found the answer to your question, as well."

"My….question….what—Briande!" she said, her eyes moving to the tall figure of the _der'morat'raken_ behind her.  "Briande, what are you doing here?"

And Briande smiled and put one hand on Arwen's shoulder.  "Why shouldn't I be here?" she asked.  "I am Arwen's mother."

Keille stared for a moment, then snapped her fingers.  "I _knew_ it!" she said triumphantly.  "_That _was why you were so concerned about returning here, wasn't it?  That was why you were so interested in Arwen, and why you've been acting weird around the other Others.  I knew it all along!"

The young human's enthusiasm was so infectious that it brought a smile to Arwen's face as well; she gathered her courage and said, "And there is more, Keille."  At the human's questioning look, she glanced up at her mother for reassurance, then said, "Mother has just offered to bring me with the Ever Victorious Army when they go back to Seanchan and…and I have agreed.  Keille, I—"  She faltered, then drew on her courage.  "I am going with you.  I have chosen the path—I will be a _morat'raken_."

Keille stared at Arwen for a long moment, then a slow smile spread across her features.  "A _morat'raken,_" she said, grinning.  "Imagine that!  Briande, does this count as a recruiting bonus for me?" she asked, her eyes twinkling.

"I don't think so," Briande replied with a hint of amusement in her tone, "given that I was the one who convinced her to join."

"A _morat'raken_.  Well.  Now I've heard it all."  Still smiling, she reached out and grasped Arwen's hand, shaking it firmly.  "Welcome aboard, Arwen of the Others—Arwen Undomiel?"

"No," Arwen replied.  "Simply Arwen….Arwen of the Others," she added with a glance at her mother.

"Arwen of the Others then.  Arwen, apprentice _morat'raken._  That sounds good to me," she said warmly.

Arwen smiled back.  "Me too."

"Come on, Briande," Keille said then, grinning up at her _der'morat._  "Let's go get this new apprentice shaped up."

"Of course," Briande replied.  The three women set off then, heading down the stone brick path to the Seanchan encampment.  
 

            Elrond sat, still and unmoving, on the terrace where he had spoken with Celebrian—Briande, he corrected himself bitterly.  He did not—could not—move.  To move would be to move forward, to take some action, to acknowledge and accept what had just happened.  To acknowledge the loss of his wife; the impending loss of his daughter—and not to Aragorn, as he had thought.  That loss, he had come to terms with; it would be easier to lose her to Aragorn than in this fashion.  Aragorn, for all that he was human, was at least part of the world he knew and understood.

             _You say "my daughter" as you would say "my sword" or "my horse"….Perhaps your desire that she remain as she is is _why _she chose a mortal life._

The words.  The words that Celebrian—_Briande, _it was Briande, for Celebrian was dead—had thrown at him.  They had cut him deeply, and he was assuredly bleeding.  Perhaps even to his own death.  He could begin, dimly, to see now why some humans considered death to be a mercy.  This was something he had never known before.  Another new thing to consider, and again, he had the Seanchan to thank for it.  So many new things, in such a short time.

He heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to the terrace, and did not bother to turn his head; he knew that they were Aragorn's, for all that they were slow and dragging.  He had time to wonder, with black humor, what shock Aragorn had received at the hands of the Seanchan, before the man of the Dunedain entered his sight.  His appearance matched Elrond's own inward state; the Doom of Men sat clearly on his shoulders.  Elrond could see it in his face; he looked as if he had aged ten years over the course of the last night.  Aragorn lifted his eyes, looked at Elrond, and must have received some sort of indication of the Elf's own internal state; he took a seat across from him silently, lowered his eyes to the cracked stones of the terrace, and said nothing.

For a time they sat there, unmoving, unspeaking, as the wind of the night drifted around them, bringing the distant sounds of the Seanchan encampment to their ears.  Elrond himself might have gone on sitting so forever, but Aragorn, for all his valor, was only a Man; he was made of lesser stuff.  He shifted at last, and spoke, his voice ashes.

"The Ring is destroyed."

Elrond nodded; he had expected nothing else.  "How?" he asked, without real interest.  "Not in the Cracks of Doom, I take it."

He did not see Aragorn shake his head.  "No.  The Seanchan used those terrible chained women again…._damane,_ I believe the chained ones are called; the others are—are _sul'dam_….  Their chief _sul'dam_—she brought up several _damane_ who 'had very good control with Earth,' whatever that means, as well as 'an affinity for metals.'  It was on the North Terrace.  It…was not without cost," he said, but did not elaborate in response to Elrond's questioning look.  "There was an explosion—"

"The smoke, I would guess," Elrond said grimly, thinking back to a column of smoke he had seen earlier that evening, rising to the north of the grounds.  

Aragorn nodded and swallowed.  "Two of them were killed in the attempt.  But the Ring, the One Ring, it—  I—I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it."  He ran out of words then, and lapsed into silence.

Elrond shrugged internally.  After the destruction of Isengard, nothing that the Seanchan did could surprise him anymore.  If High Lady Suroth asserted that they could pull down the sun, he would have believed her.  _Isengard.  Celebrian.  Arwen.  Imladris._  And then, the Ring.  The nexus of power that had been a constant presence in his thoughts and plans, that had driven every action he and Galadriel and Gandalf had taken for the past three thousand years, gone in less than a moment, by the actions of these Seanchan—reduced to just one more item in a list of things they had destroyed.

Now Aragorn gave a shuddering sigh and passed a hand over his eyes.  "Boromir will go with them," he said in a voice that was slightly unsteady, although it could have been just from fatigue.  

Elrond could not summon the energy to speak, but he gave Aragorn a questioning look.

"When they leave for Mordor.  Which they will do tomorrow, or the next day at the very latest," Aragorn explained.  "They cannot use their doorway until it is a little closer, so High Lady Suroth is making arrangements to move the army.  Boromir is with their—their—Ground Captain right now, helping him to organize the move.  He was full of wild talk about how—how strong the Seanchan were, and how he was sure now, after having seen them fight at Isengard, that they would be able to accomplish what the Men of Gondor had not been able to for centuries, that they would overthrow Sauron, take Barad-Dur for their own…."  He trailed off uselessly, staring down at his hands.

Elrond shrugged again.  For something to say, he said, "Perhaps it is for the best.  He may be able to fulfill his ambitions there.  These Seanchan—they seem to have scope for those afflicted with the curse of Men," he added, and was somewhat troubled, even as he spoke, by the level of bitterness in his voice.  _And perhaps …it would not be the first time—in the history of Seanchan—that a former _da'covale_ has…become…_Empress….  

He saw that Aragorn was looking at him strangely, and made some effort to rouse himself from his thoughts.  "Are you well?" the man of the Dunedain asked.

"More or less.  Perhaps less rather than more," he added bleakly, but did not elaborate in response to the man's questioning look.  This pain was too deep, too personal and too strong; there was no way that a Man could understand what it meant to him, to know that his wife was now and forever, truly lost to him.

Or perhaps one could, he mused, for now Aragorn closed his eyes and leaned forward, resting his forehead against his clasped hands.  From that position he said stiffly, "Arwen is gone," and then fell silent, his shoulders trembling as he fought for control.  Elrond watched him in both sympathy and horror—sympathy, for he could understand what Aragorn felt, and horror, for if Aragorn started weeping Elrond did not know how he himself would be able to hold back from the release of tears.

To forestall this, he said, his voice rough with urgency, "How do you mean, 'gone?'  How is she gone?"  He knew the answer, or suspected he did, but he had to say something.  And—perhaps—he needed or wished to hear the truth, himself, and it would be easier to hear it first not from her but from someone who had loved her as much as he did. 

"Gone."  Aragorn shrugged helplessly.  "I—I met her on the path leading down to the Seanchan encampment," he explained, and as he spoke, it was with the voice of the night, the winds; his words came slowly, haltingly, with long pauses between each as he struggled to find the balance between control and loss.  "She had—she had a young Seanchan with her, one of the riders of their flying beasts—two Seanchan, actually, one short, one tall."  Elrond winced inwardly, for he could guess who the tall one was.  "I spoke to her, demanded to know what she was doing, where she was going with those soldiers, but she would not speak to me; she only looked at me strangely—something had changed in her eyes, I know not what—it was almost as if she—had never seen me before, or something of that sort.  I asked her again, and she—she said she was—was going with the Seanchan; I asked her what of us, of our love, and she replied only that she was sorry, but it was over. I couldn't believe it, I….I asked to know why, and she replied—"  Here he broke off, apparently too hurt by the memory of her reply to speak further.

"What?"

"She replied," he said now, looking up at Elrond, "that she did not think she had ever truly loved me, but only the idea of what I was; she said….that she thought that with the Seanchan she could find that idea within herself.   Do you understand this?"

Elrond only shook his head, slowly.  The Seanchan.  Again, the Seanchan. 

Aragorn looked up at Elrond now, his helplessness revealed in his eyes.  "What do we do?" he asked, his voice almost a whisper.  "What can we do?"

Elrond could only shake his head.  "I do not know," he admitted.  

And he did not.  He was accounted wise, but his wisdom contained nothing to help him deal with this, with these Seanchan who were so different, so strange from everything he had ever known.  

"They will take everything that we have," Aragorn said now, looking at him.  "They have taken your daughter, my wife—"

"My wife as well," Elrond murmured and looked away before Aragorn could catch his eye to question him.

"They bring change.  They have changed….everything."

_Everything…._

Five hundred years.  He had anticipated his reunion with Celebrian for five hundred years, he mused dimly; had spent the past five centuries looking forward toward the moment when, together at last in the Undying Lands, he would be able to take his wife in his arms again.  He had thought of their reunion so often, had imagined it so often—he could even see the details of the dress she wore in his dreams, her long blonde hair streaming unfettered down her back, the enchanting smile that she reserved for him and him alone.  In his dreams she was just as she had been when he had last seen her—when they had first met, unchanged, beautiful; he would take her in his arms, and it would be as if no time had passed between them, as if they had never been separated at all. 

He had thought—if he had thought at all, he realized bitterly—that he would have her back unchanged—or if anything, changed for the better, with the pain and sorrow brought to her by the orc-dens healed at last.  So it had been in his imaginings.

It had never occurred to him that anything else could be the result, he realized now, and was surprised to find himself shocked at his own folly.  He had simply assumed that she was waiting for him in the Undying Lands, as static and unmoving as a garden statue.  As if she could be reduced to a single image, a single moment frozen in his mind and held that way forever.  He had never stopped to think that—that she _could, _even over the course of five hundred years in a strange new world—forge a life for herself apart from him.  And yet she had.  Briande Duchen Paendrag had, and so his five hundred years of waiting, enduring, longing, were now worth nothing at all, and all his previous imaginings suddenly seemed to him now nothing more than the pathetic delusions of a weak, misguided fool.

He might have wept, if he had had the strength.  But the night had drained his energy and so he could only sit, numbly pondering the wreckage of his hopes.

Perhaps it was for the best, he thought with an inward shrug, and tried to make himself believe it.  He could not see how that might be right now, but perhaps….perhaps….He sighed heavily.

"Mordor will fall," he said with a shrug.  "There is that at least."

"At least…."

Neither of them could think of anything else to say.  The two of them remained, sitting on the cold marble benches in the carefully tended and shaped gardens that Arwen had created three hundred years ago, as the first sliver of the sun crept above the horizon.  As a new day dawned over Imladris. 

Scissors moved and closed, and with the metallic _snip_ of the shears, a long curl of hair fell away, midnight-black and gleaming and as soft as the finest silk.

"You're going to hate it at first," Keille's voice came from behind Arwen's head; her tone was very matter-of-fact.  "That's a guarantee.  You're going to absolutely hate it your first year and wonder what in the world ever possessed you to join up; you'll probably cry yourself to sleep every night and dream of getting yourself wounded or injured somehow so that you can honorably get out.  I know I did."  Another snip, and another lock of hair, added to the growing pile.  "Just remember you're _supposed_ to hate it; that's the whole point of the first year.  Your _der'morats_ are trying to weed out the ones who are serious and who have what it takes from the silly girls who are just playing at being _raken_-riders because they like the image.  Remember that you're supposed to hate it, that everyone goes through it, and that if you can just hang on through the first year, things get all kinds of better the second year.  I used to tell myself, 'The _der'morats_ can intimidate me, they can make me upset, they can even make me cry, but they can't make me quit.  Only I can do that.'"

Arwen absorbed this information in pale silence as the scissors moved, shearing her hair away; she had already traded her simple white gown for a spare set of Briande's old flying leathers.  She watched the mirror in front of her gravely, as Keille and Briande moved around each other in the interior of Briande's tent; she watched as Keille's scissors moved, transforming her reflected image from that of Arwen Undomiel, the Evenstar of Imladris, into Arwen, Apprentice _Morat'Raken_ of the Ever Victorious Army.

"It may seem too much to absorb at first," said her mother—_Briande,_ Arwen reminded herself, then changed that with a wrench of her mind to _Supreme _Der'Morat'Raken _Briande_ _Duchen Paendrag_, her mother's new name with its full title.  Briande was gathering up the strands of hair as they fell from Keille's scissors, pulling them idly through her hands.  "You _can_ learn it all though, if you work hard and try; the _der'morat_s will never set you a task that is undoable.  Others can do it, and you can as well; I managed to learn most of what you will in the first year without any formal lessons, and I was _da'covale_ the whole time.  You should save these," she added, her fingers deftly braiding the strands of hair together.  "Get a box and keep them; I still have mine somewhere."

"And I," Keille added.

Arwen started to nod, then thought better of it as Keille's scissors snipped again, underneath her left ear.

"They're going to tell you you can't do it," Keille said, remembering.  "That was always the hardest part for me, hearing my _der'morat_s tell me they didn't think I could do it.  I just told myself that it was my choice and that I chose to prove them wrong.  Then when I graduated and was made full _morat,_" she added, grinning at the memory, "_Der'morat'raken_ Henna Tisrek came up to me, shook my hand, and told me that I had been the most promising apprentice _morat_ that she had seen in ten years.  That felt really good."

"Will you be with me?" Arwen asked suddenly, turning to look up at Keille and Briande.

The two women stopped and looked at each other, as if caught off guard by the question, then shook their heads slowly.  "I am sorry, Arwen," Briande said gently, "but no.  The _der'morat_ in charge of all the apprentice _morats_ is Lalei Sin; she will be the one who guides most of your training."

"The whole point," Keille added gently as Arwen dropped her eyes, "is for you to sever any connections to your previous life; that way you can get used to the idea that you are now _morat'raken_ more quickly.  I wasn't in contact with my recruiting _morat_ either when I first joined.  If the _der'morats_ or the older _morats_ are coming down on you too hard, you can go to Lalei," she offered.  "That's what she's there for—it's part of her job, even if she'll never say it to you in so many words.  But try not to go to her unless you really have to."

Arwen was silent, her eyes downcast; Keille's scissors moved again, and another long midnight tress fell to the floor.  Keille and Briande looked at each other.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Briande asked now, taking her hands and looking directly into her eyes. "You're not enlisted yet, you know.  You can still back out if you want to.  I'm sure that your father would love to have you back.  Aragorn too.  It's not too late—just say the word."

Arwen closed her eyes.  She was afraid; there was no doubt about that.  She had no idea what she was getting into, and she knew that she had no idea.  The confines of Middle-Earth were known and safe; her father, her brothers, her gardens, Aragorn; this new world of Seanchan and _rakens_ could be anything.  

_Known.  Safe._  Yes, the confines of her life in Middle-Earth were known and safe—and ultimately imprisoning.  She saw herself as she had seen herself, going on and on, aging but not growing—content to pile year upon year upon decade upon century, time passing and nothing changing, with tomorrow's tomorrow always and only the same as yesterday's yesterday.  She saw herself stiffening, the boundaries of her mind hardening and growing impermeable, thickening year by year until she became like her father—so rigid, so set in her ways that she could not even conceive of doing something that had not been done before.  She saw the walls of Imladris closing in on her, the world shrinking to the size of a garden, a house, a room; what was beyond, unknown.  If indeed anything was beyond; perhaps after another thousand years or so she would cease even to believe that the outside world existed.

She had been willing to accept death to free herself from that fate.  Whatever it was, to be a _morat'raken,_ at least it was not that.  Not death.

She swallowed and raised her chin, as Keille sheared the last lock free.  Her voice was strong and clear as she spoke. 

 "I am ready."

Keille and Briande looked at each other; then Briande nodded.  "Good.  Let's go find _Der'Morat_ Lalei."

FINIS

_"My mind's too full of memories, too old to hear new chimes_

_I'm a part of what was Dublin in the Rare Ould Times…."_

--Flogging Molly, "Rare Ould Times," on _Drunken Lullabies_


End file.
